COVID-19 (2): Turns out it's going to be pretty bad actually

And stocks are already about 1/3 off the peak. Although many would argue the peak was not supported by fundamentals.

Anyway - let’s all go to the Personal Finance thread!

https://twitter.com/claytravis/status/1247150506277036033?s=21

This guy is such an insufferable chode.

All the model revising literally comes down to social distancing working better in the US than Italy. That’s it. We had one Western country to go on and C-19 happened to hit the worst one first.

If we did nothing millions of deaths would be guaranteed with an absolute horrorshow makeshift hospital scene, rioting, social order breakdown, and bring out your dead wagons.

Ya I dunno, man. There are so many different variables here between the US and Italy, I would not draw any strong conclusions.There’s just a lot we don’t know right now.

Well “social distancing working better” could be a function of population density, weather, less huggy, less living with your grandparents-y, who knows? See what I did there?

But I’ll allow it could also be population differences or something else.

Anyway the point is the models were based on Italy which made a lot more sense from a US POV than China or Iran. But Italy just happened to be a covid paradise.

Lol

3 Likes

I’m pretty sure herd immunity doesn’t kick in until around 70% have had it.

I feel like if we were stocked up on PPE and vents like we should have been, now was the time to make the case for that. We’re going to be careful for like 7-8 months, keep the curve flat, and when it ramps back up about 3-4 months before we could get vaccines, we’re going to say fuck it and just take it on the chin?

I mean, maybe. Once Trump wins re-election, he won’t give a flying fuck about anyone dying on his watch.

Do they not just get completely roasted for trying this or are there enough idiots to go wild for NBA basketball while real people can’t get tested? Hopefully they don’t go through with this before everyone else goes back to business that would be insane right? I mean I’m bored but I’m sure as hell not watching sports if there’s a massive ongoing body count in this country.

1 Like

It could be a million different things. America is very different in so many ways. Size, density, climate, healthcare system, etc. etc. etc. Maybe blood types or race plays a role, maybe we got hit with a different version of the virus, It’s very tempting to blame it on stereotypes of Italians living with their parents or whatever, but there’s just so much we don’t know right now.

Plus Italy kind of got sucker-punched, right? Us Americans got to watch the disease tear through a Western nation and that gave us some information on what would happen here.

Hey, he said what have you got to lose? Not what have you got to gain

Fine - 10% immunity, call it whatever you want. I wasn’t trying to imply it’s herd immunity - just that if we get anitbody tests those people will be very valuable. And for blood/plasma donation.

No fucking way we’re getting a vaccine in 6 months. 16 months from now would be a miracle.

They’re going to shoot for herd immunity mitigated with everything they can throw at it imo.

Right - which is also very hard to factor in your model.

Obviously there’s so much we don’t know right now. You don’t have to keep repeating it. I’m never trying to pass off any of my ramblings as confirmed science - just educated guesses. I’m not Fauci - I can speculate irresponsibly. It’s a game of incomplete information right now.

1 Like

For sure. I don’t have any strong claims about how this will play out. It seems like we’re headed for an inflection point in two days, but that could be very wrong.

The IMHE guys seemed to err on the side of sounding the alarm early and often. For them to switch to being wrong the other way would surprise me.

It’s way too early to be sounding the all clear and acting like we will fare better than Italy. We will still likely lose 500k-1M+ this year…it takes 40-60% getting it for herd immunity (assuming we are even immune for long period of time after getting it) and we aren’t gonna eradicate it…

We also don’t know how much longer NY is going to go on for or if it’s even getting better since many people just don’t go to hospital anymore when they would have before

And so many states are on the upslope; NY is 50% now but will be 5% soon enough

1 Like

We’re not losing 500k-1M unless we just say fuck it and open everything up.

1 Like

Agree. Death toll in the US shows an infuriating refusal to deviate from its course, but it would have to stay at this pace for a solid ten days for us to hit 1M, and it looks like the infection rate is slowing down. Something has to give; people can’t die if they aren’t getting infected. Actually I’m not even certain if we get 1M total cases at this rate.

Untitled4324243443243243

Untitled

1 Like

These two things are incompatible, though. 60% having had the virus for herd immunity at a conservative death rate of 0.5% is a million dead. You can try to avoid old people getting it but given the observed behaviour of a lot of old people, how realistic is that. Will that plus better treatment actually halve the CFR?

This is what I mean about discourse not really moving beyond the next 6 months. I’m not sure people are grappling with the reality that you can’t just control it and then open back up. (I don’t mean you here, it’s a more general “people”).

2 Likes

The leadership of the Australian Government is in the midst of a press conference where they are releasing their modelling. It doesn’t look particularly impressive, it’s just standard theory. Not based on Australian case data in particular.

The PM and Chief Medical Officer had this to say:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says modelling based on actual Australian data will determine when the lockdowns are lifted, and that some states and territories may test the water sooner than others.

“That’s no time soon,” he stressed.

“If we’re in a position to make changes in the future then of course we will, so long as we don’t compromise the other battle on the health front.”

Chief medical officer Brendan Murphy predicted it would be “weeks” before there was enough “meaningful data” to go on.

“You don’t want to make decisions based on poor data,” Mr Morrison said.

“(We’re) trusting the science here, the research, we’ve got to allow them to do that work properly and not meet arbitrary time-frames.”

But he adds the modelling is “one of many tools we’re using”. “There is no map for this, we are in uncharted territory,” he said.

“Australia is in a position many countries would wish to be in. What we’ve got now is important time. That is giving our researchers, our scientists, our doctors, more time to be able to chart a way out of this.”

In other words, we haven’t figured that part out yet. This is what I’m talking about. People are just assuming that a way out of this situation will present itself after 6 months. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t.

3 Likes