gary17

Well the Chief Doctor of US (referring to Trump) just said it at the briefing - he'd consider asking all Americans to wear a mask (for a brief period of time). I am starting to feel the US might do better than Canada over the long run - Abbot's 5 min test; the innovation to disinfect masks ; self-swap to lessen demand on PPE -- vaccines, therapeutics .... yes Trump had a slower start, but i think once everybody else agreed to do this, that innovation is there to solve this very quickly. Canada feels to be the opposite.

so true , Liberty. and same case in Canada. I watched the face-mask question asked twice today - once to Dr Tam and once to Dr Williams on two separate occasions. I just couldn't get why they insist wearing masks for the healthy presents more risks - where's the evidence of that? did we see that in Asia? and if it's so risky, why won't they public on government website how to wear masks properly? i think by now everybody knows how to wash their hands. time to show us another trick... lol i don't have a problem if they'd just be honest and say we don't have enough masks - please save them for frontline workers.... don't lie to people... and maybe companies in canada will step up to make them.

it looks like Washington and California states are under control ? only state loosing it seems to be New York!

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/david-staples-who-policy-fuelled-canadas-failure-to-slow-covid-19-at-borders/ sad the Canadian government had a good start but lost it all ... now country in financial ruins (and $20 oil)

why is Boeing up 30% - world not flying and TSLA up 10% - factories shut and Walmart down 5% - actually open and feeding people stock market doesn't make sense to me!

Ramp up max production ask people over 60 stay home people under 60 wear masks to work / school for 1 month until this whole thing is under control or drugs found economy not killed yes wearing masks sucks for western society - better than completely killing the economy

That's known facts but US is/was a manufacturing powerhouse - it won't take long to catchup. It's about people's will. Rollup the sleeves and get to work! i think big companies will rethink supply chain moving forward - China is holding too many cards - the manufacturing, and the intellectual properties!

It's nice to have a theoretical debate whether mask work or don't work, but fact is they're in very short supply in virtually every IC, at least in Europe, right now. There was even a report today in which the Czech Republic supposedly confiscated a shipment of hundreds of thousands of masks which were supposed to be send to Italy, only to use it in their own hospitals. Encouraging regular folk to start hoarding them now amid a shortage seems irreponsible to me; even if they do the job to some extent, hospitals need them more. It's not a theoretical debate - it's a fact that it works. You look at those Asian countries - yes, their economy got hit hard too - but they are not shutting down small businesses. Where should the masks come from - so for the most powerful country that makes Teslas, sending robots to Mars, got the best schools on earth - they can't figure out how to make masks? Gary

Saying only sick people can wear mask stigmatizes them - this makes those who are mildly sick to not even want to wear a mask! If we are like asia where EVERYONE wears mask, then you do both protection of healthy people and prevention of droplets spreading from sick people ! https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-masks.html?smid=fb-share&fbclid=IwAR1XxGheyMqYzyDWcAvF3YyNznjJbZBHY4Hsk6tCAg4_WjkJFyR93Pdu97E

Masks help look at this report. these countries are life as normal ! https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taiwan-covid-19-lessons-1.5505031

Singapore and Taiwan are making masks themselves USA and Canada used to be manufacturing powerhouses - we sent that overseas and now we can't even make stuff from our own blue print? Social distancing is fine but no lock down. lock down is what kills the economy. if we are G7 and true economic powerhouse in the world.. super power whatever... now is the time to show that... else it's just all BS lol I hope everybody learns shipping manufacturing overseas means others are holding all the cards... i don't know what Trudeau was trying to prove by not shutting the border and /or enforce the 14 day mandatory self-isolation... they keep saying "we trust canadians to do the right thing". clearly that didn't happen... and now 3 weeks later we are shutting not just the border, but also turning asylum seekers away.

why was S Korea and Taiwan and Singapore able to manage their outbreaks without social distancing and lockdowns? these countries simply asked everyone to wear a mask - that way, whether you are sick or not - you are protected. if you are sick - the droplets wont' leave and reduces the chance of infection. combined with frequent hand wash, etc and very tight border measures, contact tracing... that's how they managed. Why can't Canada / USA make masks? is it so hard? or is it because our legal system is such that these products have to have bilingual labelling, meet CSA or ASTM or ISO standards etc that they are too expensive to make or purchase... the cost of spending $ 100M or whatever buying masks and ventilators etc 1 months ago is sure a lot cheaper than the $ 100B Canada is now spending and $1T the USA is spending.... not to mention the crippled economy and people being laid off etc. China and Russia must be laughing, the whole NATO is sick...

This is the big difference between Asian countries and Western Countries - not to be critical, but we value law, liability, freedom etc too much for government to effective in implementing measures. In Canada, you have local, provincial federal having different responsibilities. For example provinces look after healthcare while the federal government controls the border... You need parliament to pass certain things, etc. Similar in the US... in Asia things just move fast... even in democracies like Korea and Taiwan; the government will just step in and people jump on things. I guess part of it is because of the density; everyone living in a relatively small space; messages come across fast. Here... the countries are so big.... things happening in BC ; but some decisions are made in Ottawa (similar to Washington and DC).

risk is relative risk free government bond - 10 year at sub 1% with no earning power increase for 10 years. Gary

most contracts have a force majeure clause. i don't know if that's the case here though.

my personal view was the economy is hurt by over-reaction much like the virus itself... some of the fatalities are due to the body 's immune response... anyway... i thought it is interesting S Korea did many tests and their death rate is at 0.6% - don't disagree it is many times higher than flu but much less than the WHO figure of 3.4%. this is based on how many tests are checked. so may be Trump with his dumb luck had it sort of right that this was a bit like flu and for most young health adult it is not any different. https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-are-koreas-covid-19-death-rates-so-low/

Trump's early border control of banning flights from China has helped buying them time, i think credit for him on that. The US has about 15 cases if you ignore the repatriated citizens; for a country that's 10x the population they have just 2 cases more than Canada. but now that the virus is not in China anymore, it'll be interesting to see if Canada and US can continue to keep the virus ratio low. Interesting during SARS (and I know we are not supposed to compare to SARS) - but Japan had 0 cases!

we all know how compounding works...

i have a hard time understanding why the market did the 600 pt drop Friday and now with even more cases, the market seems to have completely forgotten about the virus... major news outlets are now focused on Iowa... virus is not front page anymore very emotional market!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-coronavirus-airlift-update-1.5449419 something tells me either the Chinese are still upset about Huawei or Justin’s team is just outright incompetent.

this is a reporter doing reporting in wuhan on youtube. he’s a critic of the communist party so he’s been using proxy software to be posting on youtube in china. you can see from earlier videos he posted of hospital scenes it’s in mandarin but there’s plenty of footage that’s pretty self-explanatory he is reporting that talking to a nurse yesterday, the crowding condition at the hospital appears to have died down somewhat, which i hope is a good sign

This is too hard to follow, can you not turn this into dollar per share. thanks

71% leveraged portfolio concentrations in BAC, CSU, SHOP, AAPL, XPEL, SSW and RH helped ! got a few smaller positions in msft, TSU, V, MA, FB, AMZN , etc all did well too, i guess it's a bull market, so could have just picked five stocks and likely got similar or better results LOL, no skill involved. i picked up some FFH lately and am studying GUD, MTY, BYD.UN etc for 2020

From contacts I have, seems like the scenario Prem was concerned about China a few years ago may materialize. venture capital seems to have dried up. Government spending is down (subsidies for solar , wind and now EV are being cut, as well as many others) , and finally, Trump put a real dent on their export. No wonder the chinese caved (they were going to earlier if Trump hadn’t changed his mind and pushed harder). No technology transfer will have impact on china. And the forced retirement of Jack Ma is sending a strong signal to many young , smart minds in China to rethink whether they should invest their career in China or elsewhere. Things like wechat and alipay are all controlled by a few communist elites that paved the way for the broad adoption in China- and this at the same time allows the government to have very direct control of data of its citizens. I think the US with its free enterprise and democracy backbone will continue to be the economic powerhouse that marches forward…. PS. China’s gdp likely very low. lower than the 6% states have

SSW is doing well. 8)