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I try to stay out of such discussions because they seem mostly useless to me since it is more about opinion than facts. That way no one will convince anyone, no benefit. But some things I cannot let go uncommented. My parents-in-law and parts of my family live in Minsk, Belarus. The reason the country is not shutting down is not deeper wisdom of the government. But the simple fact that there is simply no way how it economically could afford a shutdown. Lukaschenko himself has stated that. Fact is that there is enormous pressure on the health system (why f.e. some medical students have been ordered to work in hospitals). It is not that no one dies. It is just that the majority of victims is not counted as Covid-19 victims but officially died of pneumonia, bronchitis etc. of which numbers seem to be soaring. In fact, there are too little test kits available to properly assess that. At least this is what I hear and also read. Also Belarus is comparably late in the cycle, even official numbers have been growing recently percentage-wise, as you can see above. The weeks now will be decisive. From my own talks with people living there I cannot confirm that they test people extensively, quite the opposite. What the government is saying and doing are different things. F.e. Belarus currently employs restrictions for travelers arriving in Minsk. Germany f.e. is a 'risk country' since 25. March and there are special checks for people arriving from Germany, including being asked to self-quarantine after arrival. Also officials do indeed try to help the situations in hospitals with protective gear etc. at least as much as they can. Remarkable from what I hear is the formation and self-organisation of civil help. Private people, NGOs and businesses alike crowdfund and source protective equipment and organize help for risk groups. Many people do take it seriously. They do self-quarantane as good as they can, avoid cafes and gatherings etc. If there are no 'piles of dead bodies in the streets' it is because of that.

Understood. We will try to post more detailed explanation, and all members are welcome to ask specific questions.

@Kim, With quality I do not mean success rate or wrong selection of trades, I have no doubt you and @Yowster think thoroughly about them. For the non-earning trades, more explanations about why we select some strikes, their widths, expirations, etc., are more valuable, at least to me. This is for me the 'quality' aspect I like to highlight and it would very helpful for me, as a newbie.

Sweden is so densely populated, and like others said, not a major travel hub like the US. I also see that they have a very high mortality rate. One thing to remember is that I personally think our death numbers will go up as people who are on vents will finally succumb. However, the mortality rate will actually drop as you see more widespread testing and see how many asymptomatic patients there are in the communities. We need better tracking to see who these people are and who they come in contact with and also to put them in quarantine. Our state has been hit much less than others because our governor was smart and started lockdowns relatively early. However, we have 50% of our ventilators utilized right now with Covid patients. Imagine it we started opening things up and grandma and grandpa got exposed? They are the ones who are most susceptible. And one more interesting fact, we started doing pre admission testing for elective surgeries this week. By close of business yesterday, we had 2 patients already who has tested positive but were completely asymptomatic. Who have then been in contact with? Grandma and grandpa don’t need this. One last thing to mention...you have to continue to eliminate visitors in nursing homes. They are a major breeding ground and all it takes is one to get it and you could have 60, 70 or more easily. And these are the ones who die without much chance of success.

This question was asked of me and I’ll answer.... Would be very interested to hear your opinion. Specifically, how would you handle it? If re opening now is not the solution, then what? One of the opinions that I heard (from several sources) is that the final outcome is known: 50-70% of the population will be infected anyway. They just don't want everyone to be infected at the same time not to overwhelm the healthcare system. So there will be several re openings and re closing spread over many months in order to spread the number of cases over longer period of time. Here is my opinion, do phased reopenings. Continue to deny high population events, such as concerts, sports, church, etc. Continue to allow many who can, to work from home. You must do strict adherence to social distancing until we have slowed this to a crawl. Meaning restaurants, while I’d prefer to see stay curbside pickup, if they open, distance tables and all staff should wear masks and be tested daily when they come to work through a screening. Meaning temp, and questions about loss of sense/smell, travel, contact with any positive patient, etc. (The issue with that is will people be honest?) Most importantly, RAMP UP TESTING. We have to know who has this and test frequently. Labcorp, Qwest, and most state labs are running well behind because, guess what, the swabs that are used to do the nasopharyngeal testing are made in....yep, Italy! Expand the antibody testing ASAP. One bad thing about that is that people can become positive again, which we still don’t understand. Retrovirals may play a large part in getting us over the hump, Remdesivir may be a game changer based on the research I have seen and from talking to other doctors. Hydroxycloroquine is a major no go. Causes too many arrhythmias at the levels you need for it to be successful. Folks, this may last for years! We talk about a vaccine...well, there are seven coronavirus types, the standard 4 you see on a respiratory panel, which are all common colds, MERS, SARS and now Covid 19. Guess how many vaccines were produced for the first 6? ZERO. We may be able to come up with something resembling the flu vaccine, but depending on whether Covid 19 mutates like the flu, that would be hit and miss. We are going to have a changed world for the next few years in my opinion. Good luck to all and please stay safe!

Pinto, it’s not a bunch of BS. Had we not gone into lockdown here in the US, we’d be absolutely screwed right now. Everyone would be like NY. And to open things back up, and I don’t know how we don’t, as our economy will be crippled for years as it is to pay off this debt, is going to cause a second wave. I have been a hospital CEO for 15 years and we are dealing with Covid 19 patients aplenty. Yet we still can’t get our NORMAL supply of gowns, gloves, masks, etc. We are running with about a 20 day supply and if we have another major surge, we will be in about the worst position I could imagine for our hospital. We do have about 15 hospitals within an hour of us, so it’s spread out some, but we are the second largest and with our resources, we’ll get hit hard. I urge everyone to take this 100% serious and not to think it’s just overblown by the news. And as for the “herd immunity” in Sweden? Their situation isn’t even remotely close to ours and had we attempted this, our death count right now would be in the hundreds of thousands with many hospitals collapsing.

This is the second interview with Professor Knut Wittkowski that Martin Armstrong has posted, https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/professor-knut-wittkowski-update-interview/. I really like Wittkowski. He comes off as extremely credible, and he states unequivocally and with support that the shelter-in-place was unnecessary, and has made things worse. YouTube will probably ban this soon, but it will be posted by others, so if interested but this link is broken, search for it.

I have been with SO pretty much from the beginning. I can tell that 1) the performance is real 2) there are some wild fluctuations in monthly numbers 3) yes, it is possible to replicate the official numbers or come very close, but it requires a lot of work and commitment. @Kim is talking about expectations all the time, and it is very true. Some months will produce double digit returns when the environment is right, and there will be periods of lower returns.