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Everything posted by Spekulatius
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Rest of China had a lockdown too that was more stringent than in Europe or the US. Population is wearing masks and companies go to great length to avoid infection at the work place (I mentioned before that they shut down air circulation systems in factories /offices and vent with fresh air. They possibly are very good at contact tracing too (Big brother state). I also think that the Chinese government is lying about cases to some extend. Now if it were a full fledged epidemics, lying doesn’t work, but a few dozen unreported cases or even death here and there to avoid public unrest seem to be plausible, If not likely... Interesting. So did the rest of China do physical distancing / lockdown like what we are doing in Canada/USA/Europe? I know Wuhan was shut and just opened a few days ago. It seems pretty amazing China managed to keep the rest of the country operating. I think so different parts of China did different things. Some had strict curfews in place. The info I got was from Folks here who work for an US high tech company with operations in China. They try to actively learn from their chinese colleagues how to deal with this specifically at the work place.
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Rest of China had a lockdown too that was more stringent than in Europe or the US. Population is wearing masks and companies go to great length to avoid infection at the work place (I mentioned before that they shut down air circulation systems in factories /offices and vent with fresh air. They possibly are very good at contact tracing too (Big brother state). I also think that the Chinese government is lying about cases to some extend. Now if it were a full fledged epidemics, lying doesn’t work, but a few dozen unreported cases orevendeath here and there to avoid public unrest seem to be plausible, If not likely...
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FNMA and FMCC preferreds. In search of the elusive 10 bagger.
Spekulatius replied to twacowfca's topic in General Discussion
I think it is very unlikely that the current government messes with anything related to housing right now that risk are wheels may be coming off. Now if they are forced to due to a very clear court decision they ist change think I can’t think that setting FNM/FRE free from a politicians point of view. Focus is elsewhere for month if not years and there is serious risk to the housing market. No position. -
Forest Trump talking medicine: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1248698754556923904?s=21 I am sorry if it sounds reasonable to you.
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Yeah, it's clear that they were giving out inaccurate information. The real question I wonder about is whether they were doing that because they're corrupt or because they knew that if they gave out accurate information, China would screw them, potentially making their response even worse. Did they choose the lesser of two evils, or are they just bad? Across all of this, the one definitive lesson to be learned is that the CCP is a big problem and big western nations ought to distance themselves from China, even if it costs money. It's a shame that America isn't in position right now to step up and take international leadership in doing that. The simplest explanation is the best imo and they are just bad and kept regurgating what China told them. WHOhas good People and probably incompetent ones. Let’s also remember Dr Carlo Urbani, a WHO Doctor who probably prevented a SARS epidemic in 2003 and paid for it with his life. Also, let’s face it a nation like the USA doesn’t rely on the WHO. The US has its own boots on the ground and knew about the virus early January if not earlier. They sure have people and informants their as well Aswath ing social media
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Big fan of Belgian beers - Chimay and Leffers a value option. Some local breweries make awesome variants of the belgian originals. I miss going to the craft beer places
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Also, Peter Attia thread on the hypoxia/hemoglobinopathy theory: The hemoglobin binding notion is very unlikely IMO. For one, Covid does not infect RBCs (where hemoglobin is). And for another, there is a very easy explanation for hypoxia in these patients: ARDS. Occam's razor is useful here. And let's not forget that the vast majority of "in silico" computational binding studies are very low utility and certainly not predictive, even weaker than in vitro studies (which is itself inferior to in vivo and then in situ). Bill Gates in the video posted by Liberty doesn’t believe it works either. He mentioned it looks good in the lab, so they surely have looked into this. Personally, if I get COVID-19, I would ask my doc to give it a try. It’s not like there are many other options and I don’t have or existing conditions the would make it dangerous for me to use. More upside than downside I think.
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Austria did a random study using PCR tests ( somit would capture those that overcome the infection already) and they have a 0.33% infection rate estimate for their population: https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/oesterreich-corona-101.html
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Welcome to the new "free market" economic model: where bankruptcies are a thing of the past! They would be stupid not to to ask for it in the current environment. Has anyone asking for a bailout been rejected?
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you may already have If only I could've gotten a test at any point, we'd know. Someday government will actually address the problem that's leading to the economic problems. Until then, regardless of orders from governors, folks aren't going to spend money. That's the crux of all the "open the economy talk". There are 8 states with no stay at home orders right now. Spending still fell off a cliff in South Dakota just like everywhere else. SD small businesses are even getting larger bailouts than middle class workers in NYC, despite 'not being affected'. I don't even understand what epidemiologists you guys are blaming for the stay at home orders. Not one of them has any actual authority. It's this weird boogeyman. Aren't you supposed to be upset at Trump/governors? As long as the virus is around, you can open up all you want ,but not many people will go, except those they watch Fox News maybe. People will go to work, perhaps wearing masks and with precautions (which is what Imam doing right now) and than GTFH (Get the fuck home). Right now, the government should really get everything moving to get a humongous Testing capability installed everywhere. - in every drug store or larger work place, schools etc. That is the only way avoid flying blind and getting data (people with symptoms 1-2weeks after the fact and after they infected a bunch of others. Until this is in place the social distancing will be with us and every activity or business that involves larger groups can’t really operate without severe limitation or not all.
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Boomers: The Real Participation Trophy Generation
Spekulatius replied to Nomad's topic in General Discussion
This is true. However, the initial commentary seemed more political than anything else, and while we would all like to think tha tthe general public is thoughtful and discerning it's just not reality. I think that the last election is more than enough to prove that point. Amongst my friend group (mid 30s) this is starting to bubble up as a topic whenever conversation turns to deficits and medicare, etc. Young people are just future old people. The boomers were the free spirit revolutionaries in their times with the summer of love and the anti-war movement and all the drugs and rock and roll experimentation with the long hair and bell bottoms and all that. Now they're decried as the old ossified establishment. The wheels keep turning. People are people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The boomers had more fun than the Millennials will ever have. If the Millennials want to change the world, they need to stop voting for grandpas to begin with. -
Regarding microdroplets transmission in enclosed environments, the Chinese turned off all air circulation systems during the quarantine in buildings. Likely due to experiences with SARS.
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Some conflicting data - France and Spain are not doing well. Spain is actually worse than Italy right now. Spain and France both habe BCG vaccination.Also, Portugal, which has no BCG vaccination and is poorer does much better than Spain, it’s direct and richer neighbor which does have BCG vaccination. So quite a few countries run counter this trend eventhough they are otherwise comparable. Reading the article it looks like Spain had it between 1965-1981 and Portugal had it between 1965-2017 — which seems consistent with the latter doing better? True, misread it, although this means that that the difference only applies to those under 40, which don’t tend to get hit that hard. Spain is also doing worse than Italy right now. There could be a lot of factors and it’s likely more than one.
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^ I would say that NYC is still different than SF or LA in that most people use public transportation in NYC which is not to the same extend the case in SF or LA. If you ever took the subway or the LIRR (in my case) in NYC you knows how got of a transmission vector this might be. Boston also has significant public transportation for commute and is a hot spot as well. Likely other reasons like SF being really proactive (shelter in place on February 25) or perhaps the warmer weather might be factor too. That’s the thing with exponential growth models , a couple of seemingly small factors can make a huge difference in the end.
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Buffett/Berkshire - general news
Spekulatius replied to fareastwarriors's topic in Berkshire Hathaway
If a company does any work in the medical or related to the medical field , it’s essential. Same with Military. A lot of manufacturing business are open. I actually don’t know of any larger manufacturing business in my circle that is shut down. Stuff like semiconductors, semi equipment, Optics or even suppliers thereoff are all operating. -
Some conflicting data - France and Spain are not doing well. Spain is actually worse than Italy right now. Spain and France both habe BCG vaccination.Also, Portugal, which has no BCG vaccination and is poorer does much better than Spain, it’s direct and richer neighbor which does have BCG vaccination. So quite a few countries run counter this trend eventhough they are otherwise comparable.
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It is interesting to see how different some countries are doing they seem comparable. For example, Portugal was long considered a backwater relative to Spain and they have a similar mediterran culture, but Portugal has competently handled this crisis (early lockdowns which citizens actually followed )while Spain did not. This article in German but with some Google translation you can figure out what’s written there: https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/corona-krise-wie-portugal-es-schafft-vom-virus-nicht-dahingerafft-zu-werden-a-41a9c2a2-ef73-4ee7-8c44-5b3cfa1fbc4e On the other hand France looks pretty bad and it looks like they have dropped the ball on testing too. A lot of lessons will be learned on this hopefully.
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Will Work From Home Be a Permanent Trend
Spekulatius replied to BG2008's topic in General Discussion
As has been pointed out above - working from home is terrible if you are starting out. How are you going to learn how to conduct yourself, get trained or get to know your colleagues. It’s also hard for a supervisor to get to know you. I would say a mix of working from home and a Wework like office setup, that is designed to encourage communication and teamwork ought to be something they might work well. As for myself, I am senior engineer/ project manager and support special projects (design stage) and also manufacturing. I could (and have ) worked 80% from home and 20% on site. Started to do that in March when the crisis broke out without real issues , until the company I worked for put the hammer down on individual work arrange and told all engineer that we need to be on site. I spoke with engineering managers of other companies in comparable field and they do this very differently. Oh well. -
Neat idea and hardly(to my knowledge) a crowded institutional idea either. How do look at structuring this in a cost effective manner? I gave it a quick glance and put it on the "take a look at" reminder list for later. But briefly, couldn't you construct a cheaper expression with an outright short and some calls to hedge? Or is this a "big expected downside so go really far out of the money" situation? I just buy long out of the money puts. Very interesting - what dates you buying on the puts? Mostly I buy longer dated stuff--Jan 2021. I have some shorter dates on this name too, but mostly I'm in Jan 2021 $100s/$120s The spreads on those puts is something to behold. Bid and ask are 2x apart (order of magnitude).
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No, I'd say just kill them all. They gonna die anyway. A lot of problems solved. The risk group is probably 1/3 of the population depending on how it is defined.
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A form of what Dr Burry is suggesting is likely what we see as we move to the next stage in the battle. Is the church of “scientific consensus” going to change their view? Will the epidemiological popes allow Galileo to give his opinion or will he be burned at the stake for heresy? My guess is the latter... Lol, Galileo. Galileo's investments in Gamestop and Tailored Brands need the Church to listen! Galileo may be suffering from an acute case of incentive caused bias (Even Newton wasn't immune to the whims of the South Sea Company)... But yes, what Pres Cuomo is already planning...a strategic reopening. No matter who they are, consider them talking their own book.
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From an economic perspective - how do you think this plays out?
Spekulatius replied to LongHaul's topic in General Discussion
Exhibits A and B for my point. Not to worry too much about the fools of randomness as the key concern for those who take this seriously was that policy makers would be among these people. Thankfully, we have seen the vast majority--even those that dragged their feet--take it seriously when reality became impossible to ignore. Even the guy calling it a "hoax" just a month ago now claims he was on board the serious person train the whole time! As policy makers have largely understood seriousness (though some variation depending on where you live), the systemic threat is reduced. Those who continue to minimize the threat confine a large part of the consequences of their views (ignorance) to themselves which is the appropriate outcome. TL;DR: don't waste time on the fools of randomness--I certainly will not. i watched a 45 minute documentary of what actually happened in Wuhan, China. It was a health and economic disaster. And then the disaster played out again in Iran and Italy. This was not a Hollywood movie. Not fake news. Yes, people it really happened :-) - Thanks for posting. Very interesting documentary and well worth watching. It quite demonstrates the drastic measures that China used after they botched the early containment. -
One day after Trump/Fauci talked about mask, I saw people wearing mask at work in hallways. note that we operate clean room and grey rooms where people are wearing masks, but they usually removed them when they step out. Not any more! Goes to show that messaging from leadership is important!
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A form of what Dr Burry is suggesting is likely what we see as we move to the next stage in the battle. Is the church of “scientific consensus” going to change their view? Will the epidemiological popes allow Galileo to give his opinion or will he be burned at the stake for heresy? My guess is the latter... It’s not a matter if, It’s a matter how. Do a controlled burn and make sure it not spreading into a wildfire. That’s a going to be the game. The vaccine is going to be too late to save us
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Totally immaterial. Even if hydroxychloroquine became a treatment the impact to Sanofis bottom line would be immaterial due to this substance being a generic. Then on top of this, Sanofi is a small position of this funds portfolio.