I think there is a strong political component to the hysteria mongering about Covid19 by the left media. While there is a self-fulfilling prophecy element to it, I placed a bet that reality will set in this summer and bought some ITOT in my IRA. This is so I can sell without wash sale limitations since I do not hold it otherwise in my investment accounts.
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Yeah, but the infection rate could be a lot higher for this than the flu. Many old people get their flu shot and many people have some immunity to the flu from having similar versions in prior years. There’s no prior exposure to this virus so instead of 5-10% of people getting the flu some winter, now maybe half the people might get it. Together with a 10x worse fatality rate, that could make it a lot worse.
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NCOV is more contagious than “the flu”. It survives longer outside the body. If 34 million got NCOV, we could be looking at 340,000-1M deaths, but it could be more if hospitals get overwhelmed. Just to keep things in perspective.
And when it comes to deaths from car accidents, there is a psychological factor in the justification – people generally think they have more control and could avoid an accident. But they probably don’t feel like they have any control over what might happen if they get infected by a virus.
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Also just so y’all know, there aren’t enough tests made available by the CDC. I heard a second-hand account that doctors in LA are sending people with COVID symptoms home to self-quarantine, and there are only 500 tests/day available for LA county (with a >10M population), so very few are getting tested, which keeps the official case count artificially low.
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I can’t tell if you are joking.
Summer weather should drastically reduce the outbreak.
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It’s not an unreasonable bet based on what we know about the flu season, but I haven’t seen any scientific confirmation of this for this particular virus.
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Yes, but it’s reasonable assumption, at least with the data we have for now, if it behaves similiar to SAR and MER. Time will tell.
Right. This thing is probably everywhere given the incubation time and the similarities to cold/flu.
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Today I saw a lady walking out of the store with about 60 rolls of TP. She is ready for the downfall of civilization.
Long Kimberly Clark TP stock.
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The temporary spikes in sales of TP will undoubtedly be followed by equivalent drops, because people ain’t gonna shit any more than they do now. Not literally anyway (well, except the unfortunate few that get the runs because of the virus). Smart money should be (and probably already is) on disposables that will actually get used up, like face masks and hand sanitizer.
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Anyone who walks out of Costco or Sams Club has nearly that much TP, or none at all. I have 3x that on hand right now, for no particular reason.
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This is how it looks in Italy right now. They just quarantined the northern part of the country.
I think there is a very real risk of getting the healthcare system overwhelmed anywhere that doesn’t pretty much lock down everything to slow this down.
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My thoughts exactly. I’m thinking 3M and Procter and Gamble would be interesting. Unfortunately Gojo (Purell’s manufacturer) is privately held. Retail stocks are probably going to do well - Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, etc. I also bet online grocery delivery starts to take off as well, and I figure that extends beyond just this event.
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Meanwhile, on the right, they mocked the coverage of the Coronavirus as being overblown at CPAC. It turns out an attendee tested positive. He interacted with Matt Schlapp (who later shook the president’s hand), Ted Cruz and Paul Gosar. The latter two are in self-quarantine.
The good news is that 12 days ago, the president told us there were only 15 cases in the US (there were 60 at the time, but math is hard), the number of cases was “going very substantially down, not up.” and “within a couple days it is going to be down to close to zero.” His uncle was a super genius, so it must be true.
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30yr treasuries were at 0.70% earlier this morning (!)
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Observation
The war between the world and the virus is ongoing, of course. But right now the virus appears to be winning. 
Temporarily maybe. There is not much in the long term outlook that’s different from 3 months ago. And between drops in mortgage rates and stocks looking cheaper, there’ll still be opportunities to take advantage in the short term. Also it could promote the growth of some sectors, like say cashless/contactless payments.
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Make your own soaps at-home and package it as “removes Coronavirus germs”. PROFIT!!
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That is amazing, never thought I would see it.
It is mostly traders trying to avoid the collapse and trying to front run the federal reserve before they start up the next round of asset purchases.
If rates go negative in the US I think that will be very dangerous for global markets. There will be almost no safe soverign debt offering a yield above inflation which will be disasterous for insurance companies, retirees, and pension funds.
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