KCLarkin

Was hoping nobody would feed the MAGA-trolls, but since Viking broke the ice... I am happy to talk about all the myriad failures of Premier Doug Ford in Ontaraio. AMA. P.s. for those surprised that Canadians have an opinion on American politics, please understand that we watch American TV, movies, football, etc. We listen to American music. I can't name a single Canadian supreme court justice. I know almost all the American justices. IIRC, the left calls this "cultural imperialism".

Similar situation developing in Canada, though we are a bit delayed.

Glad I ignored this too. We bought our house it Toronto at an insane price in 2010, expecting a 30% drop. I felt sick when we won the bidding war. It would probably sell for ~ 2x now*. Friends who bought starter homes in the area are messed up, since they can't afford the upgrade. Suburbs or bust. * Most of the stocks I follow would be up even more, so the opportunity cost was high.

This article reflects my opinion on Sturgis: https://slate.com/technology/2020/09/sturgis-rally-covid19-explosion-paper.html

You're an investor, so this should be obvious to you. You need to look at NET not GROSS. If there are "30M" protestors on the street, you need to net them against the people who aren't out. For example, many cities had curfews. So how many people stayed home instead of going to restaurants or bars? For many cities and many protests, net mobility was probably negative. (plus the masked/unmasked, indoor/outdoor dynamics which you choose to ignore)

There are plenty of studies. It is legit to question the quality or the bias of the research. COVID is so widespread and there are so many confounders, I doubt there will ever be high quality evidence in either direction.

If you'd stop making everything political, there are actually some interesting conversations about Sturgis.

This is also a lie. I thought the protests WOULD result in spread. I haven't seen any evidence that they ACTUALLY HAVE though. There is a very good reason why 30M people protesting might not impact overall spread of Covid. You are a smart guy, I'm sure you will figure it out. I needed someone smarter to explain it to me. Hint: there are more than 30 million people in the world.

Please keep BLM on the political threads. This lie would take about 3 seconds to debunk, but I don't want to clutter this thread.

To me, your comment seems to imply that: A) you view the Fed much more influenced by COVID case numbers than employment numbers. Or perhaps, B) you believe that the COVID case numbers are so strongly correlated to the employment numbers so that they're basically the same thing (i.e. if COVID cases decline to zero, employment will quickly return to high levels). Or, C) the Fed cares a lot about asset bubbles and sees this one, so they'll reduce stimulus even if employment hasn't recovered. Is one of these views basically your position? Because the evidence I've seen seems to suggest that the Fed is likely to be reluctant to reduce stimulus until employment numbers return to levels that cause significant inflation. So, I'm curious if you think A, B, or C above is true, or if there's something else that I don't understand about your reasoning that will help bridge that gap for me. Thanks! B. But my bearish view is based on a large amount of data points I track, not just based on COVID alone. Those data points led me to sell out in mid Feburary and I was feeling like a fool for two more weeks back then. Right now those data points look even more exaggerated than in Feb. However, I've been weighing the two scenarios since last night. Sector rotation vs everything crash. I start to lean against the case of a sector rotation right now. When AAPL, TSLA, SHOP etc go bust, traditional value stocks could have their day. People who bought AAPL and TSLA have never bothered to look at what happened in 2000. Cisco was the equivalent of AAPL and TSLA today. When Cisco went into bust, it went down 90% while traditional value stocks like BRK went up 100% Not a bad call here!! Good call MM

Doctors are famously anti-maskers. https://www.google.com/search?q=doctor+covid&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4oYzb0c_rAhXchXIEHa2hCD8Q_AUoAXoECAsQAw&biw=1920&bih=1067 The MAGA-trolls on this thread are clearly off their meds this morning.

I'm gonna step out of this conversation. But it is interesting that you are using air travel (~ 1 u.s. death in the last decade on commercial aircraft) as your example. Corona (~200,000 deaths in the last 6 months). Your perceptions of risk might be skewed!

This is a pretty interesting theory: https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63 If confirmed, it opens the door to many more potential treatments. Vitamin D could also potentially partially explain the divergence between cases and deaths we've seen this summer.

You have inadvertently clarified the major fault lines in this thread. If you downplay the risks of driving, it absolutely changes the risk level of driving. You drive a little faster, run yellow lights, text, drive after a beer. And risk doesn't rise linearly, so small behaviour changes dramatically increase your risk. And it doesn't just change your risk, you increase the risk for everyone else on the road. the estimated risk of a pedestrian being killed is approximately 9% if they are hit at a speed of 30 mph. The risk at an impact speed of 40 mph is much higher, at approximately 50%. The same thing happens when you downplay the risk of a pandemic.

Fact check: sales of one company's divorce software are up 34%.

There is only one definition of “herd immunity” and it is a simple mathematical calculation. Pretending that a decline in cases is due to your b.s. definition of herd immunity is wishful thinking. Herd immunity is calculated assuming the whole population is susceptible AND there are no other interventions. There is some population level immunity that is helping control cases in hard hit areas. But the low level of spread in places that haven’t been hard hit is pretty compelling evidence that partial immunity isn’t the sole or even predominant variable controlling spread.

How anyone can plausibly claim any country has reached "herd immunity" until we better understand seasonality is beyond me.

PSA: YOU CAN NOT DERIVE THE HERD IMMUNITY THRESHOLD FROM EMPIRICAL OBSERVATIONS DURING UNPRECEDENTED NPI. Flu deaths in Australia are down 90% YoY. You can pretend that social distancing, hand washing, masks, school closures have no effect on transmissions of contagious respiratory viruses. But the evidence is overwhelming against your "opinion". Anyone who is using empirical observations to derive "herd immunity" should immediately be disregarded as a hack. BTW, for the "it's just the flu" crowd, the proper comparison is with flu deaths from March 2020 to March 2021.

... covid one-third death rate of flu in Texas. so hard to understand? Saw that Texas has tragically passed 11,000 covid deaths. Reminded me of this b.s. that you and Abby were spreading a month ago.

Cases in Sweden plummeted at the end of June. The most likely explanation is school closures and summer vacation.

Because I'm hoping you will improve your critical thinking and stop posting so much pseudo-science and anti-science on this thread. Why don't you come up with two alternatives other than "immunity" to explain the observed household attack rates. If you can do that, I will give you five other possible explanations for free.

I can think of many reasons. And "immunity" to a novel virus would be very low on the list of possible explanations. I posted the choir study to stimulate your imagination.

Counterpoint: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6919e6.htm

It would be roughly true if there were no public health interventions and no voluntary behaviour changes and no seasonality.

This is B.S. If this were true, there would not be the second wave phenomenon seen in past pandemics.