I think that was the case in a lot of the country, but not in like NYC where they were just slammed. I could be wrong, though. But Arizona is heading to NYC level pretty quickly here.
That could very well be the case.
NYC was Italy-level slammed with no time to prepare. Hospitals have had 3 months now to plan for steady increases in covid. Although they could still get way more than they can handle.
Surgical procedures are hospital money makers, unfortunately they often require ICU beds before and/or after surgery. Washington actually has a DOH that is helpful getting supplies and equipment where it is needed, and also coordinates between hospitals making sure patients get bed space. I’m thinking Georgia, Florida, and company don’t offer that kind of support. I also doubt they were loading up on portable monitors and IV pumps making it possible to turn their acute care floors into temporary ICUs. The only spare space they will likely have that can provide ICU level care is their ED, post op, and step down units if they have one.
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Hey @Will1530, it’s time for our irregular Seattle covid update. How’s things looking from a guy in it everyday? Numbers holding steady? Cases the same severity? Seeing anything change?
I was up in our Seattle office yesterday (Pioneer Square) and was pleasantly surprised to see most folks walking the streets wearing masks (side note: there weren’t many people walking). Only saw one other person in our building and they were wearing a mask as well.
Traffic coming back south on I-5 was a little congested, but nothing like what a normal Thursday would be when leaving Seattle at 4pm.
I’m putting some of my cash in FXE - in case the USD tanks vs. the Euro like it did in 2008.
Curious if this already happened. My guess is that if he’s actually a top-level economist, he’s likely not to have any particular conviction about how things will play out. The more he’s willing to state something definitive like, “Stonks will do this” or “Unemployment is likely to do this” or “Inflation is likely to do this”, the less I’d take him seriously. If this is Brookings, then Bernanke, Blinder, and Yellen would all be super interesting to listen to. Wolfers is pretty famous but IMO doesn’t have nearly the substance as those three.
I’ll take this opportunity to give my brief interactions with famous economists:
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Jeremy Siegel, author of “Stocks for the Long Run”: I was walking behind him in the building one day, going into the cafe. Like, right behind him. He opened the door for himself and just totally let it swing closed on me. That was the sum total of my interaction with him, but total dick.
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Eugene Fama, Nobel Prize* winner and creator of the efficient markets hypothesis. Shared several elevator rides with him, always seemed friendly and outgoing. Asked him a question in a workshop one time and he responded with complete disdain to my apparently moronic question. Obviously very opinionated.
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Richard Thaler, Nobel Prize* winner and more-or-less developer of behavior economics. Charming to listen to on podcasts and he wrote a great memoir (Misbehaving). However, my sole personal interaction was taking an elevator from the parking garage level to some higher level. Just the two of us. I commented that one of the elevator lights was on even though we got in together and were the only ones inside, so there must be a ghost. He just stared at me without saying a word. Also was rumored to get his hair cut every year in the days leading up to the Nobel announcement, just in case.
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Todd Henderson, law school guy with a huge interest in economics. Best known for writing “We are the Super Rich” in 2010, where he laid out his struggles to get by on a household income of roughly $400k." I’ll bet Mason LOVED this post. Post was deleted after Henderson got crushed on social media, but you can find the article online, including here: We Are the Super Rich Anyway, I spoke with him several times and thought he was super nice and helpful about some things I was working on. We even talked about collaborating. Has extremely strong opinions/beliefs about how government and firms should operate.
Not sure I’ve had any other notable interactions in this realm. Met Buffett a few times, even shared a lunch table with him, but never had any in-depth conversation with him.
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I don’t get it. What kind of economy expert is not an economist?
Here’s something somewhat different: I gambooled many years ago and made a coinbase account and threw $40 at btc which is now worth about $1k depending on the minute.
I’ve been getting these sweet emails from them lately:
and they want me to upload a selfie and my ID and other shit. I’m not doing that.
I emailed them multiple times to either just give me a pass or close my account. They won’t do that either 
Its been like 2 months of “messaging” where they just send me form letters and I respond with “close my account and send me the $” and they refuse. How do I make this stop lol. Note that I’m somewhat unique in that I can probably wield my personal army in some way at least minorly in that I am the sole admin of a 22k person discord server which I’ve never done (was planning on doing some “go vote” stuff though).
Can you still send the BTC to another address? You could transfer it to a wallet if you want to hold it, or sell it IRL and transfer it to whoever buys it from you.
I’m locked out of the account.
Eh I think you’re SOL. I assume this is some sort of Know Your Customer requirement so they may not be able to waive it.
It feels like the stock market and covid are in a competition to see who’s curve looks more giraffe-like. I’m starting to feel like a sucker for pulling everything out, but I still think it was the right move. It feels like silly season.
If your model is correct we will have hospitals at least full if not overrun in the next 2 months. If that happens the bottom is going to fall out of the market again. If that does not happen though I am not sure the market will care about Covid anymore going forward. Weird situation.
I’m not sure the market will tank unless states that are maxing hospital capacity choose to lock down again. Which you think they would. But who knows, as a lot of these states seem to think fudging numbers is a better response.
I think that is a better way to put it. Not shutting down with hospital overruns would be insane but this is USA #1 we are talking about.
I agree. The market does not care about deaths. But it seems clear to me that in AZ, FL, SC, TX there are two likely outcomes:
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Another shutdown.
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Cases and thus hospitalizations and deaths keep going up. At some point people voluntarily shut down the economy out of fear, right? Like they may go to work but they will reduce non-essential activity.
I guess the other possibilities would be:
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They are able to double or triple hospital capacity, rather than just 1.5x it as my model guesses. This probably means field hospitals, which also means people have to see tent cities at hospitals and not do #2 above.
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They are able to get mask compliance to be a thing AND it takes R0 below 0 AND this happens before they overflow. That’s quite a needle to thread, but it’s possible.
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The question becomes how much of NYC’s shutdown and compliance was due to it being a liberal area versus people’s fear? I think Staten Island is the relevant area to look at (it’s more conservative and Trumpy), and we saw people about a lady down in a grocery store for not wearing a mask. We saw no protests of the shutdown there, either, as far as I know.
It’s going to be that when everyone knows someone who was on a vent or worse, or is like one degree removed from that, and some people know like 5 people who got that sick or died, ~everyone takes it seriously.
Also keep in mind that the mayors of Austin, Houston, etc, are going to be screaming from the mountaintops about this if the governors do not shut down or don’t allow them to shut down. I doubt the market gives a fuck if Odessa, TX is open if Houston is closed…
That is the million dollar question really. If Florida and Texas start hitting 10k+ new cases/day (which I think is very likely at this point) are they going to shut down the major cities? That would certainly have an impact on the markets.
I also see your point about voluntary compliance having an impact on the markets but I think we see that later in earnings reports and the like. Keep in mine we are only a couple weeks from Q2 earnings season which will really move the markets one way or another as we see companies lay out the damage both past and present.
One of the big things I’m watching here is Disney. Looks like Orlando is a mess. There’s no way their reopening is going to be safe on July 11th, do they punt or do they just say, “Fuck it, yolo, we’re open.” If they push that opening date, I think that’s a big signal to Wall Street overall. Something like that could trigger a selloff across the market IMO. It could be to the market what Rudy Gobert was to the country.
Agreed, that would lead to an “oh shit” moment after earnings reports start coming out at the end of the quarter. I don’t think Q2 earnings will have much of an impact in relation to what’s about to happen in those states, though. My guess is we see a lot of mediocre earnings and not a whole lot of companies forecasting the rest of the year with any degree of confidence.
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Apple should close more stores to make sure the stock goes up another 5%
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