Does the coronavirus merit investment, or personal, concern or consideration?

This virus is so bad, it not only kills people who die from car accidents, now it’s killing people who never existed!

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No question. They will raise the body count high as possible in order that the big number, they hope, reflects poorly on Trump. It’s pure politics. It’s what they do. It’s all they do.

There are >150k deaths counted.

I’d expect to get a few dozen clerical errors in there minimum.

Clerical!! Somebody who tested positive dies in a traffic accident and they are added to the COVID-19 death toll. That’s the kind of stuff that’s going on!!

The election is less than three months hence. At this point liberals will stop at NOTHING!!

Yeah, it can’t possibly be that the #1 focus of medical professionals is caring for the overwhelming influx of hospital patients who have trouble breathing, not quadruple checking every entry on paperwork. Those evil doctors are just trying to hurt the Trumpster Fire’s glorious leader’s failing campaign.

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Got it!!

That’s assuming there is no long-term side effects - like heart complications - for those who recover. If there are some significant ones - still to be determined with any certainty -, that could actually impact a lot more our GDP long term.

IMO, another issue is if the US is disproportionately affected compared to other countries. Let’s assume it’s only a medium term effect, I view this a bit like delaying retirement investing when you start working. If you wait, it’s much harder - higher contributions/returns needed - to catch up with those who invested early. Similarly, if Germany, China and/or South Korea limit the impact on their economy a lot better than we do, relatively, we’re going to lose ground economically to them. If they limit impact on their education system better, again we lose relatively. If they limit the financial drain due to hospitalizations, treatment, etc… from the pandemic, we lose further ground economically. All incremental losses but I’m concerned those would add up to a significant relative loss of economic power to me.

You have a verifiable number on those allegedly-deliberate clerical errors? Saying it’s rampant without proof sounds very conspiracy theory-ish. One case here and there does not make 150k.

Also even if we’re theoretically 90 days from election day, this year will be a bit different I anticipate. By the time the first debate comes around, many States will have had substantial vote by mail.

Not sure in other States, but in mine, mail ballot applications will be sent to all active registered voters by Labor Day (although you can request them independently already). Figure a couple of weeks for people to fill and send their applications, receive their actual ballots and another week to send them back. A ton of the voting could be done by end of September. Personally, I will have voted by then to make sure my ballot does not miss the deadline. So effectively, there’s not even that much time to move the needle.

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To be fair, that incident was from FL and medical billing fraud is like second nature to much of the healthcare industry there.

And as to frequency of errors, don’t worry. It’s just like voter fraud - we only find out about the very few that get caught :wink: .

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Except there’s potential long term side effects from car accidents, cancer, and virtually every risk we accept on a daily basis. If you’re going to shift the baseline, you need to shift it for everything being discussed.

And I still suspect that most of those long term complications are from undiagnosed pre-existing conditions.

Heart effects I’m optimistic will recover in 3-6 months typically based on what I’ve read, but we don’t really know yet and will just have to see how it goes.

As for US relatively, I think the bigger issues are the actions of our government for the impacts on the economy, not the difference between our disease management vs elsewhere. Shutdown policies and Fed printing I think are the big issues to watch. The dollar has already fallen a lot vs other currencies due to all the printing, and I’m worried the politicians will take this as an opportunity to buy lots of votes with all this free money stolen from the future, existing asset holders, savers, etc.

Those side effects for cancer, car accidents, etc are all things the market has had years to factor in because we’re only improving on them very incrementally. So these are very much known quantities that are fairly stable year over year. Hence the markets have reached stable valuations on what costs those have.

But COVID-19 is still not there in terms of cost evaluation. So IMO, the markets are not acting on firm knowledge of the full costs of COVID-19, more on wishful thinking that there won’t be significant long-term side effects. If there are significant heart complications - citing one that I’ve seen mentioned a few times, but nobody knows for sure -, this is not something that’s currently factored in.

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Very valid concerns there on Fed printing money and dollar losing value. The forex rates have already seen a noticeable drop and will continue to happen if they go for another stimulus with money we don’t have. And I totally agree about the potential to “buy votes” with throwing paper money at people.

But the management of the pandemic also impacts the need for such stimulus or not. If we had it more under control, we would not be in position to discuss whether another economy-busting shutdown should be done or how many trillions we need to add to the debt to support people who are not working. Other countries like Germany with much better control over the pandemic will have lower hits on their economies and thus won’t need as much stimulus. That’ll get reflected in forex rates with them.

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That is amazing. Or unbelievable. I understand not liking the man, but death threats to his family?

I’m sure you consider them to represent a certain overly broad group. But a vast majority of people on all sides find this to be inappropriate (to put it mildly) and in no way endorse it.

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Maybe if he destroyed your business with his lockdown? Hard to know what people are thinking, but certainly small businesses are suffering and most of the bailouts have been aimed at bigger ones (not even medium sized ones).

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Define short term. :slight_smile:

Wait, are things unmanageable now? I thought the initial lock-down was just to flatten the curve. In fact I had to leave the country before I heard “flatten the curve” enough times to blow my blood pressure. :slight_smile:

Yeah, combine the deadly flu and covid-19 and we may have a death rate of 2+ percent. Oh, and kids aren’t too zealous about opening school. :laughing:

I wondered how long it would be before someone trotted this out. The models predicted 1 - 2M deaths. The models also predicted my friends in mid-south Florida would be hit by hurricane I*. In fact, my models predict that I’m going to live to see Halley’s comet a second time. I will be the oldest human of the last few centuries. :laughing:

Do you want to reconsider this statement? If not, how old are you and what school did you go to? :slight_smile:

The 9/11 attacks were purposeful attacks directed at the U.S. by young male Islamists. Most responded with outrage.

No one can say anyone purposely killed anyone, with the possible exception of Cuomo. Although this may have been a Chinese attack, it was not directed solely at the U.S., and has not been proven to be purposeful.

Although they may be happy to spin it toward Trump, I also think it is related to economics. There must be a tidy sum in all of the Covid-19 funding for hospitals clinics, and healthcare facilities to deal with this //scary Halloween typeface on
PANDEMIC
//off

Sorry for combining your response in this message, @Shandril, but I can only post 3 consecutive posts.
Countless labs have reported a 100 percent positivity rate, which means every single person tested was positive.

Considering the hyperbole of all media, I wouldn’t put much stock in the “countless” descriptor (unless they only recently graduated). Regardless, there are lots of clinics in FL reporting 70+% positivity rates. I don’t think all of this can be attributed to clerical errors.