Spekulatius

CINF is another P&C insurer that doesn’t have expect Virus exclusions in their contracts. Ever since they disclosed this on their CC, the stock has been weak. TRV has explicit Virus exclusion in most of their contracts according to their last CC. I recently bought some. CB also seems OK, but was a bit more Evasive. They have been good underwriters traditionally. Note that business interruption is Traditionally only meant to pay in case it prevents the business from operating due to property damage , but apparently they will get tested by some lawyers. It’s much more harder to argue for paying when it is explicitly excluded, so I think lawyers will go after those that don’t have the Virus exclusion.

COVID-19 death likely undercounted (Nate Silver): https://twitter.com/abcpolitics/status/1262026365907410949?s=21

Biergarten in Bavaria are opening up again. I have been to that on on the picture. https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/biergaerten-oeffnen-wieder-corona-lockerungen-in-bayern-ab-montag,RyrdS5C Regulations differ from state to state, but the basic rules are the same. Interesting, my mom told me yesterday that cafe’s and restaurants in her town are opened up last week, but every customer one needs to leave a short form with address and contact information. Likely for contact tracing if any outbreak were to occur.

Here are the antibody numbers from some harder his neighborhoods in Boston. Roughly 10% have antibodies, 2.6% were COVID-19 positive. I thought the antibody numbers would be a bit higher by now - we did have higher numbers in Chelsea (~30% and they’d a few weeks back - Chelsea is hardest hit in MA). https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/05/15/boston-coronavirus-antibody-testing-results Herd immunity certainly a long way off. Here in the boonies, 35 miles from Boston, we haven’t even started yet. MA is in no man’s land as far as the epidemic is concerned - no herd immunity in sight, but also case numbers aren’t coming down quick enough to do control the disease, if we open up. The leaky shelter in place that we are having doesn’t really get anywhere. There probably is no choice but open up, can’t be shut down forever. Governor Baker will announce his plans tomorrow.

That’s my thinking too. How effective the WFH work style depends heavily on the work force and the nature of the work. When you have a cohesive team they is used to work together, working from home may work quite well. If you have a lot of newer people that need coaching and training and high turnover workforce then it is probably not going to well. In either case, I can see a lot of benefits of meeting and working together in a centralized location from time to time. Personally, I could do 75% of my work well from home , but the remainder would be bit more iffy and at least less efficient.

The first line Ebola treatment is an antibody treatment from Regeneron. It roughly halved the mortality. https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/new-england-journal-medicine-publishes-results-ebola-clinical There is a long way from preclinical to a treatment on the Market.

I am not sure which prison data you are referring to. Here are some samples https://www.inquirer.com/news/coronavirus-testing-montgomery-county-jail-asymptomatic-philadelphia-prisons-20200428.html Montgomery County’s jail tested every inmate for COVID-19 — and found 30 times more cases than previously known "171 of those positive inmates exhibited no symptoms at the time their tests were administered." They had 177 test positive of which 171 asympatomatic again confirming Stanford study that there are many asymptomatic cases. Its just that all countries test only with symptoms that we have high CFR. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/25/coronavirus-testing-prisons-reveals-hidden-asymptomatic-infections/3003307001/ Mass virus testing in state prisons reveals hidden asymptomatic infections; feds join effort More than 90% of the newly diagnosed inmates displayed no symptoms, https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-prisons-asymptomatic-8daaaa08-b53e-4368-adb7-88b7d93efece.html 96% of nearly 3,300 inmates with coronavirus were asymptomatic, survey shows https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-prisons-testing-in/in-four-u-s-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96-without-symptoms-idUSKCN2270RX Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms. I can go on...but the primary conclusion of Stanford study that when we are calculating case fatality rate after testing mostly symptomatic suspected patients, we are missing a lot of asymptomatic infected carriers which would give much smaller IFR. The WHO said 3.5% CFR with low asymptomatic rate which would make 3.5% IFR. WHO still says there are very few asymptomatic covid infected and never updated the 3.5% CFR. So, the prison data infact does support Stanford findings. I am referring to Ohio prison data. Pundits mention that 95% were asymptotic (which means exactly what with prisoners), but they still have around a 1% fatality rate. So ~20% of the symptomic prisoners died.

The Ohio Prison stats seem to indicate a mortality rate of 0.9% (4321 tested positive, 43 died), allürisoner tested apparently, so that a true rate. The Anti study (N=300) that inferred about 15% of the population had the virus inferred a 0.75% fatality rate. The recent Spanish antibody study estimates that 5% had COVID-19. so that’s 47M x0.05=2.35M infected and with 27.5k dead, that‘s a ~1.1% mortality rate. All those mortality rate are likely to go up because of the long tail of morbidity. The results vary of course but I think ~0.8% is a good estimate for the time being. Some countries are doing much better than which gives me hope. The 0.15% of the Stanford study is likely due to erroneous results skewed by false positives. https://www.physiciansweekly.com/spanish-antibody-study-points/

Interesting - these are vineyards (Pfalz?) not grape varieties. Earthy stuff from that area. I grew up surrounded by Rieslings vineyards. I could look at the Wehlener Sonnenuhr Rieslings vineyards from school. Good stuff and I can get it NH liquor stores. I like the Rieslings and other whites from the Finger lakes (upstate NY). They come closest to German wines, imo. There are some Canadian wines from Lake Okanagan area that are equally good, imo. I’d love to go back there. There is a town there that bears the name of our son.

In this, the expert article, also referring to the now famous church coir incident, He estimates that: ~50% transmission are due to aerosols , risk factors: closed areas with bad air circulation and many people on it, speaking and even worse singing 40% larger droplets 10% smear/touch So hand washing may not help that much. Mask helps some, but only N95 helps against aerosols. Staying and meeting other folks outside is probably best. The Church cases are intriguing. One infected person in a large room could infect 30 s with just one exposure. The fact that singing apparently lead to more aerosol emission is likely a contributing factor. This is all a bit speculative, but it does make sense. https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/covid-19-belastete-troepfchen-machen-geschlossene-raeume-zu-infektionsherden-a-7522885d-7553-4acc-ac5d-ac603552ed06 https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them

And BK and USB: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/36104/000120919120029062/xslF345X03/doc4a.xml

And everyone would lose. No, Liberty (the concept) would win. ;) How naive you are. You think China would come out of a world war more democratic? You think liberty in the US would increase in the face of nuclear war? You think Taiwan wouldn't be potentially destroyed? You think dead people are free? Didn't Germany and Japan come out of a world war more democratic? Yes, but it took two trials though. The first one made it worse. I don’t think we want to go there.

Litigation lawyers and lobbyist are leeches, at least on the society as a whole. however depending on how you look at it, they do provide a lot of value for their “customers”, ar least in some cases. Controversial take: All religious organizations can be regarded as leeches. I would rate the Catholic Church as the biggest and certainly one of the most durable ones ( full disclosure: I was raised catholic)

Beware the narrative. Just because you see a picture of a full bar doesn’t meant that it’s a typical situation or they all bars are full. I suspect some people just go out and others don’t yet. Any pickup in case numbers from lack of social distancing will take about 4-8 weeks to really show. At least in some regions (Georgia) they have reduce the occupancy to a level that will reduce the risk of spread hopefully. We will see how it goes. I don’t think anyone can predict the result exactly.

I think you need to look into more detail. I know for fact that Texas didn’t have a statewide shelter in place , but it did have shelter in place in the larger cities like Austin, DFW and is think Houston (not entirely sure on they latter), so essentially they had the same thing where it counts (cities). Being spread out with relatively low population density and without public transport also helped. I think this is at least a large part of the explanation , but there could be other factors (weather etc) as well.

Arn’t most GP/ LP relationships like leech/ host. For a leech/ host relationship the following would need to be true. 1) it’s hard to impossible to get rid of the leech 2) the leech can suck on the host, but it can’t suck it dry without imperiling itself 3) The leech benefits much more with less effort So a hedge fund GP isn’t really a leech because typically the LP can Get rid of him. A closed end fund manager may be a leech, or private equity or the beloved BAM. With MLP, the GP in most cases acts as leech. I mean the GP/LP relationship is basically a codified leeching relationship.

BJ’s contribution to herd immunity wasn’t particular impressing, emergency room visit and all. I also don’t know what came into his mind we he told his nation on Sunday that’s whoever can should go back to work on Monday basically. That’s kind of a short notice. What is sort of ironic is that the UK had tougher restrictions for citizens during the shutdown than most of the rest or Europe (Germany, France, Scandinavia, France) and yet their results are on par with Italy and Spain’s despite having more time to prepare. Germany and Denmark have already eased their restrictions before the UK could.

Every commercial property lessee is going to ask for rent reduction /participation in cost due to COVID-@9 impairments. Have some office space where you can’t fit all the people in the elevator at the same time, or can’t occupy your office space with the same density - well you are going to ask for a rent reduction. Same for pretty much any B&M store which are getting whacked by online retailing anyways. That’s going to have quite a bit of impact for the real estate asset and CMBS loan valuations. Ouch!

I doubled my ABEV today. ;) The thesis for ABEV is as follows: 1) The stock is down more than 50%. 2) The stock has never been they cheap in terms of P/S (as far as I can see) 3) The balance sheet is very strong (net cash) 4) Most importantly: Brazilians like beer (courtesy Of DooDiligence)

I added to CMCSA, TRV, ORI, VIVHY. Started new positions in HDS and ABEV after some DooDiligence.

I haven't been able to envisage the end state here. So imagine you are super-successful like Oz, NZ, Singapore and your cases go to zero. The rest of the world (ROW) screws up and muddles its way to group immunity, perhaps at horrific cost. So ROW have 70-80% people with immunity, and the virus is still circulating. Now you have three ways out. 1. Vaccine is developed and you get immunity without the horrific costs. 2. The virus is totally eradicated. 3. You live in your bubble, separate from the rest of the world until either 1 or 2 happen. This doesn't seem like a viable option if its a long time. So whats the end state these guys are thinking of or hoping for? I wouldn’t necessarily discount the possibility that bilateral travel bubbles form between countries with a low enough prevalence of COVID-19. In fact both New Zealand and Australia are thinking about this and this would help out the New Zealand tours industry as most tourist come from Australia. I can see other bubbles forming in other regions like Northern Europe and later southern there Europe if the number go down far enough. You only need to do this for 18 month hopefully until a vaccine is there and / or you can reduce the risk of adverse outcomes with better medication. So they would be the end state since you ask for it. Since I am basically located in a COVID-19 leper colony here in MA, I am not counting of going anywhere far this year, certainly not Europe as I planned. It’s probably going to be a camping trip north, if those folks from VT, NH or ME will have us. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/05/trans-tasman-travel-bubble-to-allow-flights-as-soon-as-lockdowns-ease-morrison-and-ardern-agree

That's an important "but" that can't be hand-waved away. A lot of antibody tests had false positives in the 50% range, depending the population being sampled (it'll be higher outside of the major outbreak zones). That's way too high to be very useful. Stanford Dr. Bhattacharya says he had 0.5% false positive in his test. The 0.5% may be important for Santa Carla study that found 3% infection rate. But still you can take 2.5% and calculate IFR. 0.5% false positive is not important for NYC with 20% infection rate. Or Boston Chelsea with 30% infection rate. The different studies gave infection fatality rate between 0.1% to 0.5%. NY had higher rate at 0.5%. For example Miami Dade study gave 6% and 0.5% is not very important. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article242260406.html They say 165000 infected. Presently about 500 dead (I dont know numbers as of mid April). So a conservative number of using todays 500 deaths/165000 gives 0.3% IFR. Below is a study by Denmark: Using available data on fatalities and population numbers a combined IFR in patients younger than 70 is estimated at 82 per 100,000 (CI: 59-154) infections. Thats 0.082% for patients younger than 70. The seroprevalence was adjusted for assay sensitivity and specificity taking the uncertainties of the test validation into account when reporting the 95% confidence intervals (CI). New tests are even better. See below: Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine found Abbott’s test had a specificity rate of 99.9% and a sensitivity rate of 100%, suggesting very few chances of incorrectly diagnosing a healthy person with the infection and no false negatives. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/08/study-suggests-abbott-covid-19-antibody-test-highly-likely-to-give-correct-results.html Some people dont like the result of 0.1% to 0.5% IFR but it is now done by Denmark, Germany, Santa Carla, LA, Miami Dade, NYC, Boston by different well known professors and hospitals. The IFR is much lower if you take less than 70 population. At one point people need to agree with the data. I agree that some areas (NYC, Chelsea MA) are reaching numbers that imply that we are well on way of herd immunity. It that a true only in those heavily hit areas, not true in the rest of NY or MA and much less the rest of the country. It not true in Sweden either, Stockholm, Sweden represents only 10% of the Swedish population and that’s where the majority of the infection are for now. I am routing for the Swedes, they have a clear plan and are following it, so far within a fairly acceptable cost. Germany and other Skandinavien countries have pushed the curve far far down, so they have a chance squash the second waves ( the extend of which is a function of how far down the first wave have been pushed ) with aggressive test and track. What is our strategy? It depends on the state you are in and we just have to wing it. Sad.

How do we know where it "matters most"? Masks. Nursing homes where more effort is put in separating infected from not infected. Better ventilation and training at Nursing homes. We are fighting the Virus on twitter and with the Fed. So far, the Virus doesn’t seem to care.

Yeah a day after the St Louis Fed came out stating that they don’t want low interest rates. You can’t make it up. He may need the negative interest rates to keep his cardboard box empire from collapsing.

A big hacker attack would most likely hit conventional and less IT savvy business more than the GOOG , FB‘s , or cloud service or SAAS providers. If anything it would speed up the move to the cloud and would benefit larger companies relative to smaller ones.