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reasonable?! that sounds a little off considering that in 1918 non essential businesses were closed and see the contrast between Philly and St Louis in 1918. From what I have read it seemed to be standard practice. Herd immunity as I understand it can only work if society is ready to accept healthcare being overwhelmed and all of its repercussions. Of course, it is also assuming that one cannot get reinfected which no authoritative source is ready to say. I find this thread to be incredibly informative both the dialogue and identifying some of the media and governmental biases.

I think there is a problem with some of these models in that people in the science community use them one way and the media reports on them like they're forecasts. Usually these types of models are very sensitive to initial conditions and parameter estimates. From my experience they're generally used to get an idea of what the tail risk of certain policies could be. I get the impression reading most of the arguing in the media that people are cherry picking the output they want for whatever tribe they belong to (worst case) or best case are assuming that some mean output is a forecast when it isn't.

Disclaimer: I didn’t vote for either major party candidate last election. i might get blasted for saying this but I think Trump has actually taken a pretty measured approach to a very complicated problem with no clear right answers. People are criticizing him for stuff folks on the fringe are doing without his endorsement in most cases. a good example is the Georgia governor reopening early. People on social media have been using that as fodder against trump ( and things like it) but even he said Kemp is being dumb. not saying he’s been perfect...

Thanks for posting @Yowster As someone who is observing from the outside and not involved in the US politics, I'm shocked how biased the mainstream media has been against Trump from the beginning. I know it's a sensitive issue, and I'm not taking sides (although I have a very strong political opinion, but this is obviously not the place, especially considering I'm not a US citizen). But the media bias was very clear from the first day of Trump administration, and it's not surprising that during the election year it became much stronger. I believe a LOT of the COVID-19 related coverage is political and not medical, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Expecting from the media to be objective, not biased, and act for the "public best interest" is not realistic and naive. It's like expecting from CNBC to help the small investor, while we know that their first priority is to increase ratings to sell more advertising.

It's been very interesting to read perspectives from many people in this thread who are living in different parts of the world. One thing stands out to me is where the USA appears to be different from everywhere else - the rest of the world seems to want to report stats and mortalities in the best possible light with some being as honest as they can and seemingly others understating COVID-related cases and deaths. The USA seems to be alone in that it tends to report on things in the worst possible light, maximizing COVID cases and mortality rates. Some of this may be related to hostipals having a finacial reason to report things as COVID-related, but I believe most of it is simply political with a largely liberal media seeing this as an opportunity to vote out a conservative administration in November. People who just want to know COVID news and statistics suffer because of this, and have to wade through all the political viewpoints to try and form their own viewpoints. I came across this article today, I don't want to get too political and actualy though twice about posting it here because the author is obvously coming from a conservative viewpoint - but I found it a very good discussion of how the media is doing a disservice to the public in the way things are being reported.... The media keeps unnecessarily escalating coronavirus panic The coronavirus crisis has been real, and it has been awful. We have lost nearly 70,000 people in America. It's tragic, and scary. So there's really no reason why many forces in the media have to unnecessarily escalate the panic even further - using incomplete or inaccurate positioning to avoid giving the full, real picture of this crisis. It started earlier today with many media outlets, like the Washington Post, reporting "Coronavirus deaths in U.S. will rise to 3,000 daily by June 1," citing a "draft government report." Draft, being crucial, because the leak showed information that was not reviewed or approved by the Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Fauci or Dr. Birx. It was fear-mongering, and irresponsible. By the end of the day, we got more accurate data. Yes, the IHME model nearly doubled, to 134,000 projected deaths total. But the June 1 daily projection would be less than one-third the earlier reported figure, at 890. It should also be noted the IHME data has consistently over-estimated deaths throughout this crisis. Then there's the continued geographic bias against non-East Coast states - despite New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts having the four highest per capita COVID-19 death totals. Two weeks ago I wrote about CNN's false "heartland hotspots" report, predicting states like Oklahoma and South Dakota as the next big hotspots for coronavirus cases and deaths. The reality, now? By every metric, this never materialized. Washington D.C. now has more deaths than the entire state of Oklahoma, with Oklahoma having five times the population. I don't blame people like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for lashing out at the wrong predictions, stemming from a bias in the media. "We were told over and over again Florida is going to be just like New York when it came to coronavirus," said Gov. DeSantis, sharing this chart which shows New York and other states compared to Florida in per capita coronavirus deaths. The media has the opportunity to continue to educate the public. To stay focused and serve the needs of a population eager for the truth. Let's dig into real solutions as states begin strategically easing lockdown restrictions. Look at Ohio, for example. Ohio makes it very clear to see the age of the coronavirus deaths in its state. 1% of all deaths are below the age of 40. 2% of all deaths are below the age of 50. 7.7% of all deaths are below the age of 60. Meanwhile 77% of deaths are over 70, and 50% of deaths are over 80. And this is based on 1,056 total COVID-19 deaths. These are stunning numbers, that tell a story not seen in the media. What does this knowledge tell us about how we should open the country back up? Instead, the instinct of the media is to criticize anything other than panic-driven lockdown only. America needs a competent press more than ever. As we enter May and a new coronavirus phase, we need the media to stay focused and open their minds so they can serve their audience.

Given that nothing even remotely similar was implemented by the government in the last hundred years, that was indeed an absolutely reasonable expectation that it wouldn't be done in 2020. That's what happened during the Hong Kong flu pandemic in 1968-69. "In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide. ... Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 – planned in January during the worse period of death – actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked globally six months later. There was no thought given to the virus which, like ours today, was dangerous mainly for a non-concert-going demographic. Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses. Media covered the pandemic but it never became a big issue." In the last twenty years we had swine flu, SARS, MERS. And the life didn't stop. So, yes, the reaction to the coronavirus was unprecedented.

Speaking of politics, James A. Kostohryz just posted the following comment: "the response of state government and citizens to COVID-19 has been incredibly politicized. People's views on this are almost entirely driven by politics. Now, just to a thought experiment. Imagine that Trump had rung the alarm bells early on and stopped all in-bound flights from foreign nations and implemented extremely tight lock-downs like they did in New Zealand and other places. What would things look like now? Republicans would be praising Trump and emphasizing the existential threats and Democrats would be saying that Trump is being too extreme. This really COULD have happened. It is not at all hard for me to imagine a scenario, that Trump could have been convinced by somebody that his best shot at re-election was to take a "heroic" and authoritative stand against COVID-19. Just for fun, imagine if that had happened; just as a thought experiment." So true. btw, personally I believe that stopping all in-bound flights from foreign nations as early as possible would be one of the most important steps in reducing the spread. Look at Israel - they banned all flights around mid March, and they basically defeated the virus as of now. But then again, politics played a huge role in all steps. Canada never officially banned flights from China, which to me is unthinkable.

UK initially announced they were taking herd immunity approach based on the model from imperial college despite the model calling for 260k ( acceptable apparently) deaths. they backed off this after about a week. You didn’t see that?

seems like an example of biased media reports others were referencing. It’s bad on both sides in my opinion. They explicitly said in one of their press briefings that no one model was used for decision making. If you google right now you will find reference to various models over the last 6 weeks. These guys also changed their model over and over and based the initial one on data from viral pneumonia. If In fact it was basis for policy making ( it wasn’t), it’s interesting that the White House and Downing Street came to completely different conclusions from the same model. somone recently told me that all models are wrong, some are useful. I think that’s a good Mindset with which to approach these things. that said, we have no idea what the impact would be without any social distancing. People want to boil a complicated multi variate unknown risk down to simple factors based on politics. It’s silly.

I found the article interesting. Especially interesting was the graph near the bottom showing this guy has been horribly wrong in all his disease predictions for 20 years, and always in the same way - always predicting catastrophe. Why does he have any credibility at all? Why does anybody consult him? When it comes to what his view may be, your question is relevant: who cares FFS? Yet he is presented as an 'eminent virologist'.

Tons of unofficial trades in the last few days posted by @Yowsterand @TrustyJules Hope you are following.

Here is a VERY bearish case by SA contributor James A. Kostohryz: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4334820-next-leg-down-another-massive-decline-is-coming "My current “base case” scenario (my working hypothesis) is that the current bear market will ultimately fall into the “severe” category. In this particular analysis, this would imply a trough for the current bear market cycle in the range (S&P 500 index) of 1876 to 1463."

My only comment on this thread is that biology hasn't changed since the last pandemic. Only our understanding which is not complete. This time is unlikely to be different than previous pandemics with multiple waves. Reopening is highly appealing, but can result in forced shutdowns due to conditions on the ground. https://time.com/5830265/1918-flu-reopening-coronavirus/ Only an effective treatment or vaccine is likely to change things. My hope is that before the end of the year there will be something to provide an early light at the end of the tunnel.

This is what we do. A practical down to earth approach to options trading, the most engaged community and proven results.

Here is a real world example: around March 15 I got an info "from the future" that SPX would fall below 2000 by the end of April. So, I bought a bunch of APR and MAY puts. That didn't go well

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.

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.

I’m currently working in Automotive Industry in Europe. What I can tell you is that we are not going to have anything like a V shape recovery as US WH claims. The truth is that the orders for the next months are going down every day, so the forecast is that the Auto Industry will get to an output similar to January 2020 only sometime in 2022. So tighten your belts for a rough ride ahead.

I'm definitely not a medical expert and have no idea who is right. But here is my concern: each time someone comes with an opinion that is different from the "official" point of view and policy, they are condemned and declared dangerous. In my opinion, what is really dangerous is lack of respect to different opinions. What is really dangerous is an attempt to silence people. Where is the freedom of speech? Who put YouTube to be a medical expert and decide what is trustworthy and what should be removed? Do we want to end up in George Orwell's 1984 like world?

should be noted Burry was exclusively long retail at end of Q1 (ouch)...

Commentary from James.A.Kostohryz: One thing that has gotten blown off was Trump comments today regarding making China pay reparations for their role in the global spread of COVID-19. This is going to become a big issue. There is increasing anti-China sentiment in congress. I have TWO WORDS (in reality two names) that I want you to remember every time you hear politicians talk about how they are going to make China "pay" for COVID-19: Smoot-Hawley. Smoot-Hawley is perhaps the key factor that transformed what would have been a relatively normal recession, triggered by the October 1929, crash into the Great Depression. I am not saying we are going to repeat the Great Depression. I am merely telling you to follow this story, because the impact of a global trade war, as a secondary effect of this crisis, would be enormous -- and would profoundly deepen the current economic crisis and would make the bear market significantly worse than my base case. Many ingredients are in place to make this a real risk. 1) High unemployment in US; 2) Long-standing resentment of Chinese for "taking" US jobs; 3) Psychological need for scapegoats. 4) Election year politics drive populism and demagoguery.

https://twitter.com/YahooFinance/status/1255880242239025152 Highlight: “I still think that we’re going to have the worst recession since the Great Depression,” Allianz Chief Economic Adviser @elerianm says. “It will make 2008/2009 look like a flesh wound, which is a huge statement."

I may regret admitting this publicly but I have more shorts on right now than I have at any other point in recent memory.