LC

https://theconversation.com/a-small-trial-finds-that-hydroxychloroquine-is-not-effective-for-treating-coronavirus-135484 A small trial finds that hydroxychloroquine is not effective for treating coronavirus I'd encourage a read, it details the previous studies which claimed some efficacy of these drugs and why that may not be an appropriate conclusion to draw.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-prime-minister-admitted-to-hospital-for-coronavirus-tests-11969053 Boris Johnson has been admitted to an NHS hospital in central London for tests 10 days after confirming he had contracted coronavirus. The prime minister, 55, still has persistent symptoms and went on the advice of his doctor, Downing Street said. Sky News understands that Mr Johnson will remain in hospital overnight. His persistent symptoms are understood to include a high temperature.

Cesspool? That's rich, coming from a Jersey-ite! Jersey...person? No, that can't be right...Jersey....swampthing? ;D ;D In all seriousness, I can't help but love the irony of the haters of NY and CA - essentially hating on 20-25% of the country's productivity! Imagine that - two states making up a quarter of the nation's usefulness! And if you include Texas (mostly black and hispanic, FYI), now you've got 3 states carrying a third of the entire country! I mean, what are the rest of these bums doing!!??? It's gotta be the unemployed neckbeards who are complaining - living in dying coal towns, busy making america great again (from their parent's basement, no doubt). Who else has the time? The folks in NY, CA, and TX are too busy working!

It’s because the wealth line has become so steep that 200k is closer to middle class than wealthy.

China true friend of Canada? As an dual citizen I am pretty upset how Trump is treating Canada. Even a purely sentimental gesture would have been better than straight-up saying "Screw you Canada!" and having China look like a better friend. It's appalling and Canada has the right to blame Trump and every jingoistic American that Trump is catering to with these actions.

That's crazy because about 34 states have anti-price gouging laws and yet I don't see 34 states devolving into the picture that rukawa paints. In fact here in Denver I don't see any shortages as all, despite Whole Foods still charging a paltry $4 for a pack of TP. Perhaps it's regional?

I don't agree with Trump on this but lc's source is very, very much left. Here ya go buddy. Hope this makes you feel better: https://apnews.com/2858fbaa2dd5460fa2988b888fc53748

What the absolute hell is this nonsense: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-blocks-medical-aid-to-cuba-in-show-of-wild-west-brutality “Cuba denounces the fact that medical supplies from Alibaba Foundation to help combat Covid-19 have not arrived in the country due to the criminal US blockade against the island nation,” President Miguel Canel-Diaz blasted. More than two million masks, 400,000 rapid diagnostic kits and 104 ventilators have been donated by China’s Alibaba Foundation to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The supplies were destined for 24 countries in the region including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Peru. But they were blocked from the socialist island because of the crippling US embargo, in particular the Helms-Burton Act, according to Cuba’s ambassador to China, Miguel Pereira Hernandez.

I was looking at this (first I ever heard of it) and I was thinking, if I was president and this happened, how would I deal with it? Just from a pure federal resource-allocation perspective, how does DT communicate what he wants, and how does it get done? Well I'd imagine you have a circle of lieutenants, and they each over see a federal department, and under those departments you've got 5-10 units of which something like the Air Force or CDC is one of. So I'm thinking, OK if I'm president I would need people exploring treatment/vaccine solutions; I would need purchasing/manufacturing of PPE and test kits, I would need distribution for all this, I would need projections for the needs of the states in order to allocate, etc. etc. etc. And so I keep thinking (already my brain is hurting at this point), well if we've got this Air Mobility Command, I'm sure there are a bunch of these specialized groups within various departments who are best suited towards these tasks. So I don't expect the president to have all these answers, they depend on their own lieutenants to know these things. Whichever one of Trump's guys took over Department XYZ for example should know all the capabilities of that Department, so he would get the job of procuring PPE from overseas, as an example. And finally I remember reading that Michael Lewis article about a year ago, where he interviews the guys running the Dept of Energy. They were transitioning from Obama's administration to Trump's administration. And they were saying how they prepared entire dossiers for Trump's guy, as a primer to get to know the DOE. And I remember them just absolutely befuddled at how little Trump's lieutenant cared about any of it. They made a big deal about it, which at the time I was reading it I thought, "well OK that's pretty stupid, but as long as these guys are still running the DOE, at least they still know all this stuff and can keep the mission-critical stuff functioning, despite zero interest from the White House". Well now I realize that this same story probably happened all across the federal government. And I'm thinking, well if DT is sitting there in some situation room and trying to allocate tasks and resources - well the people he assigned to these various federal departments probably have zero clue what their own dept. is capable of. I guess it's a long-winded explanation of how unsurprising I am that there is a total lack of federal coordination. It's not just Trump - it's people like Trump all the way down in his administration, and that's kind of frightening.

Yea those are my thoughts too. Cheers ;D

NYC showing about 50% positive rates on testing https://media.nbcnewyork.com/assets/editorial/national/coronavirus/local-maps/nyc-zip.html

The market did come down the last few days, were you trading out prior to that? Essentially asking whether you are slowly accumulating or simply trading around the market volatility? For me I bought some WFC, T the last few days. Was planning on buying some more WFC today but was caught up and didn't have time. Hopefully further opportunity presents itself!

Wow, I remember you posted a thread asking advice on putting all your capital into a short position. I know you don't want to disclose the position, but I am interested in how are you structuring the short? Directly shorting shares? Or using some other instruments to take a synthetic short? Either way I hope it works out for you! (and if not, I hope you're on the younger-side of the equation where it's not a massive sum of capital in the absolute sense). Good luck!

Definitely freeze your credit, also check your credit report to see if any credit lines were opened in your name. I think google as well has some analysis of your email and whether it has been hacked or part of any data breaches. That may be how your information was taken.

Well, I won't turn down a compliment :D But I will reiterate that Italy vs USA are two different cases. Adjusted for age the results are not as dissimilar and Italy did not have an extra 2-3 weeks of time to prepare. In other words, if we threw Trump as PM of Italy a few months ago, I'd wager their situation would be even worse. Come on man - throw me a bone already. With a million "if"s, you could put Paris in a bottle - as my French wife would say.. You are smarter than me, I'll grant you that one.. Not smart enough to marry French. These Italian women are crazy ;D ;D

Yea but no different than any other day of the week. This is a shitstorm of conflicting everything that we live in and COVID is just another chapter, I suppose. Maybe the best move was to quarantine the 55+ population and let the rest of the wold function as normally. WHO knows? Truly the darkest timeline :D But we'll have to see I suppose. Not sure what power they are gaining from this - in fact we may see countries reduce their reliance on China as a result. But now we're all just talking out of our ass. Question going forward is what is the best way to (1) get a handle on the virus and then (2) reopen society.

Well, I won't turn down a compliment :D But I will reiterate that Italy vs USA are two different cases. Adjusted for age the results are not as dissimilar and Italy did not have an extra 2-3 weeks of time to prepare. In other words, if we threw Trump as PM of Italy a few months ago, I'd wager their situation would be even worse. To me, I value honesty of approach. So while I applaud their efforts internally, I will say screw the CPC if they indeed withheld information from the international community about a global pandemic. No different than Trump with the hoax nonsense. In fact to the folks criticizing Fauci et al. for their initial comments, who is to say Trump didn't instruct the NIH & CDC to publicly downplay the virus' potential back in Jan/Feb? His administration certainly has a history of silencing any dissenting information from within the Federal gov't.

Well, you seem to think Trump handled the disaster well. So on that basis, I'll assume that you'd be satisfied with the name of any leader who handled it better than Trump. I'm pretty bad at naming world leaders, but if I'm allowed to look them up, Italian Prime Minister Conte has handled this disaster better than Trump. Really, the hardest part of this game is naming the leaders, because almost every country's federal leadership did better than the USA. So let's add Trudeau, Ardern, Moon, Tsai, Obrador, Merkel, Frederiksen, Macron, Sanchez, Abe, Johnson.... Maybe that's a better game--who did worse than Trump? Perhaps Xi, but unlike most leaders, he didn't have 3 months warning about the effects of the virus before it attacked his country. Maybe Rouhani, but I'm not that sure about Iranian response. Really, if we're allowed to use the Internet to look up world leaders, I'm not sure why you think this is a challenge. If not, then it's pretty close to the challenge of "name world leaders who have bankrupted fewer casinos than Trump." oh yeah, right - they all did so well - ESPECIALLY Iran & Italy - now that is really funny! Oh and the Chinese REALLY did a masterful job - especially when they exported it all over the world! Gotta love the job Premier Xi did! Make some more excuses for Xi, given he had "no notice". Italy had drastically different circumstances - under which the Italian PM performed far better than Trump. Iran and China RG admittedly did not perform great. In other words, you asked the question and then cherry picked the answer. It is no wonder it took you begging before you got a response to your loaded question.

Well off the top of my head I'd put Polis and Cuomo ahead of Trump but those are the only 2 governors I know a bit of detail about their response. Still, imagining either of those two as President and I can't imagine them making as many errors as Trump did. Globally? South Korean and Singapore leadership seems more effective just going from the numbers. Australian and German leaders appear to have responded more urgently. Denmark and Norway as well. But look, I just googled it for ten minutes so maybe I'm totally wrong. In contrast, Trump tried to defer all responsibility from the start, only took it seriously when his back was up against the wall, and subsequently stumbled just about every step of the way from there. The fact that there is STILL a lack of federal coordination and communication for PPE and other medical supplies is mind boggling.

Medical staff levels in NYC is strained and cracking. All available personnel are asked to come to work. COVID positive medical staff are ordered to continue working as long as they are asymptomatic, with PPE, sanitizing standards, temp checks, and away from high-risk patients. Symptomatic staff are sent home and furloughed.

Not my forte but take a look at MGM - insiders are buying.

I have also been looking at Paychex but the industry does have low-ish barriers to entry. It does not seem like a large value-add although I will admit there is stickiness.

Dipped the toe twice in WFC yesterday and today; Bought some T today as well. My assumption is the SP500 will eventually hit 2000. I am averaging my cash position down to that point, so that's the plan I guess ;D

Surgical masks are more effective at viral transmission compared to N95 makes, despite being not as effective against 1-3 micron particles. Why is that? Because they cover a larger portion of your face.

Doing ok. Wife and I WFH normally so not much changed for us. Biggest concern is my family & community. Back in NY & Italy many relatives are doctors and nurse, they are at risk and some have recently tested positive. They are in their 40s and 50s so I am hoping for a recovery, but preparing for the worst. Here in Denver I am worried for the community, college kids and mid-20s and such who work in bars, restaurants, cafes, etc. They are and will be out of work for what seems like quite a while and I am worried what will end up happening, whether they will have a place to sleep/eat at the end of all this. The small business owners I know, they are doing their best to keep people employed or at least pay their healthcare. So we are giving $$ for that and for meals. The question is how long they can keep it up for, every day it gets more difficult.