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Dan here, dkanalytics.com editor. It is Sunday, April 5th, 2020.
Allow me to draw your attention to an April 3rd comment exchange between a youtube subscriber to my channel, Mike, and myself. I will add some food-for-thought links at the bottom of the page that relate to my comments. Sage subscriber Mike wrote the following in the comments section of my youtube micro channel — also “creatively” (not!) called dkanalytics. Here goes:
Mike’s thoughts:
Thanks Dan. I did watch the Jay video and I also discussed this virus with my brother (the immunologist). He advised that the problem with this virus is the speed of transmission which is not fully understood. He mentioned that the advisors to the government are also the same people who would be caught very shorthanded with a medical system unable to cope.
The basic (and belated) idea is to slow the infection rate through social distancing so that hospitals will cope better over a more drawn out period. If not, overwhelming numbers of presenting pneumonia patients will die at a greater rate along with the very many usual IC patients.
It hasn’t been handled well from the outset and vested interests are milking this crisis for all its worth, as you say. South Korea led the way very early in this crisis and provided an excellent model for all the countries that are now suffering. But did anyone else take it seriously from the get go ?. Short answer, no. Very good content. Thanks again.
My thoughts:
Thanks a lot, Mike. And thanks for sharing the invaluable insight gleaned from your immunologist brother. Thanks too for confirming the rapidly spreading nature of the disease. Obviously, this is very difficult to contain — and then to deal with, at the institutional/healthcare level. A German immunologist that I listened to also addressed this aspect. He made two remarks that stuck in my mind. First, people intuitively avoid social gatherings when they are sick or feel sick — especially when influenzas are paying their “seasonal visits.” Second, overwhelmed hospitals in both Italy and Spain are largely the result of creaky infrastructure, lacking equipment, poor planning, very poor hospital sanitation, and (at least in Italy) an older population that is already “compromised” and practices poor hygiene. As a result, Italian hospitals quickly became overwhelmed (happening in NYC as well, for similar reasons and given the “global city” nature of the place), sharply increasing the overall death rate from all kinds of ailments in the process. That same immunologist mentioned that German hospitals, with spare capacity (about a week ago), were taking very ill patients from Italy and Spain, and still had excess capacity. FL governor DeSantis recently issued more decrees to (relatively) modestly reduce freedom of movement, while mentioning that FL hospitals — in aggregate — were in a very good position in terms of beds and ventilators, but that Florida would only take ill Floridian cruise ship passengers while arranging for pickups (I believe with the Coast Guard) of non-resident foreign nationals by their respective country governments.
Separately, I continue to hope that politically incorrect immunologists’ assertion that increasing data about a broad spectrum of people that have been exposed to the Corona virus (a cross cut, if you will) will bear out the fact that the fatality rate of this rapidly spreading virus isn’t too different from other viruses. More data will tell. And, if this is in fact true, i.e., that a lot more people than we know have been exposed to the virus and the vast majority have been able to render it harmless (developed antibodies), then perhaps the rapid transmission rate amongst the broad population has a silver lining via providing “nature’s immunization,” which will hopefully help slow and eventually terminate the damage, from terrible deaths to system overload, that this virus iteration has “unleashed.” As you can gather, this is what I am hanging my hat on, as I lament and fear the “virus response” (the cure may be worse than the disease”).
Lastly, perhaps if the Chinese “authorities” had been more forthcoming, instead of apparently killing doctors that were banging the pots and pans, we might have gotten a faster “heads up,” and could have shielded the most vulnerable members of our population in a “laparoscopic” fashion rather than take out a “kill the economy while socializing and nationalizing it with printed money*” bazooka. Of course, and as you state, information is one thing. How well our bureaucrats would have reacted is obviously another!
* – That printed money bazooka looks like this (please see far right “vertical trajectory”):
Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL
Sincerely, Dan
Some links that you might find of interest related to discussed topic; please note that certain links, towards bottom, have been added after the post’s publishing date because I think are illustrative of our current dilemma:
LITERALLY Shutting Down the World for NOTHING – CV “EXPERT” Anthony Fauci Spills the Beans
Questioning Conventional Wisdom in the COVID-19 Crisis, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
Prof. Dr. Stefan Hockertz aktuell zur Corona-Krise
Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?
Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?
A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data
CORONAVIRUS: Globalism’s Perfect Storm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1563&v=qG33IKaX_yM&feature=emb_logo
Post publication content on “confirmed cases” below courtesy of the Macro Strategy Partnership in London (April 6th, 2020):
The number of confirmed cases worldwide rose 6.0% on Sunday to 1,274,923, the lowest percentage increase since the 10th March. The number of active cases rose 6.1% on the day to 1,014,333. In absolute terms, the daily increase (number rather than percent) in active cases fell to 58,493 from 83,158. It was the smallest absolute increase for 6 days. It should be noted that the data is revised continually so the numbers may differ slightly from Friday, but the trends are very clear.
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The obligatory boilerplate:
This commentary is not intended as investment advice or as an investment recommendation. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Price and yield are subject to daily change and as of the specified date. Information provided is solely the opinion of the author at the time of writing. Nothing in the commentary should be construed as a solicitation to buy or sell securities. Information provided has been prepared from sources deemed to be reliable but is not a complete summary or statement of all available data necessary for making an investment decision. Liquid securities can fall in value.