Parsad

I think you can equally use this argument against gun control. Guns have been around for even longer than a year. And in 2015, about 13,286 died as a result of being shot, so certainly not more than 13,286 people died of being shot in the head. And there are about 330M people in the USA. Therefore, if you're shot in the head, you have less than a 0.004% chance of dying. There's basically almost no chance of dying if you're shot in the head. Thanks! I need that! Cheers! The way I understood the comment is following way: 10 million per year die of cancer deaths every year 2.6 million died of Covid since its start. Yet the policies are such that we reduced cancer screenings by order of 80% "During California’s stay-at-home order, cervical cancer screening rates among approximately 1.5 million women in the Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC) network decreased approximately 80% compared with baseline. " https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7004a1.htm According to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at Stanford, we will be paying this price for decades to come, not just cancer screenings but diabetes, hypertension, reduced vaccination of children, etc. https://www.newsweek.com/jay-bhattacharya-stanford-doctor-says-reversing-covid-lockdown-damage-will-take-generation-1575522 Jay Bhattacharya, Stanford Doctor, Says Reversing COVID Lockdown Damage Will 'Take a Generation' About 607K people die of cancer every year in the U.S. out of the total population...not sure if your number is U.S. or global. 560K+ have died already from Covid with 30M+ cases to date in the U.S. Theoretically, with a generous conservative estimate that a third of the U.S. has already been exposed and recovered...you would still have over 1.6M deaths from Covid based on the total population of the U.S...conservatively estimated. Cheers!

Hi SouthernYankee, please don't take any offense. That argument would be ok if your choice in not taking the vaccine had no impact on others...say like getting a stent put in or not, because you have a clogged artery, or not getting chemo because you have cancer. But this is far more impactful and detrimental than even second hand smoke in how you affect others around you...unless you stay in your home locked up and never seen anyone again. I think that is the main point anyone in favor of inoculation is making...not the statistics, politics, etc. Simply that the more people vaccinated, the less likely vulnerable people will die from Covid by being exposes to others. And we've seen how variants are affecting younger, healthier people...so it is no longer just the old and immune compromised anymore. Cheers! Agree with Southern Yankee. The stats generally point to older folks (65+) or those with pre-existing conditions being the most vulnerable. It may sound selfish but if you are vulnerable the onus is on you to protect yourself. The overwhelming majority of young people recover pretty quickly (less than 2 weeks from Covid). In the US a country of about 320 million (fairly large sample size) only 8000 people under 40 have died according to the CDC. The covid vaccine was rushed to market for obvious reasons and nobody can be sure what effects if any might exist long term. If there was more science/data to support getting the vaccine I probably would. However, when the average FDA approval takes 4-8 years depending on the source to reach stage 4, I think I have a right (maybe an obligation) to be skeptical of a vaccine that went through all the steps in under a year. Stay safe and healthy--your body, your choice. Generally vaccines take that long because of limited dollars and extensive volume trials. But this was a pandemic and they essentially threw unlimited resources at it and fast-tracked emergency approval guidelines on clinical trials. In other words, the possible side effects and risks, were outweighed by the risks and deaths from not using the vaccine against Covid. You now actually have far more data, which has been extensively analyzed by experts around the world, than any trial would provide...and the results are the vaccines are effective and have limited side effects. Regarding age...some of the new variants are having a greater impact on those between 30-50, including higher mortality. So just because one variant affected older and immune compromised patients dramatically, doesn't mean a new variant could not pose a threat to the healthy and younger subgroups. And we know that the current vaccines are having some protective effect against some variants. Will that last...we don't know...but so far it is working. Cheers! Regarding the vaccine and side effects...in the short term sure you may well be right. In the long term we have no idea because the vaccine has not been used that long. Regarding age....no idea where you are getting those figures from. The deaths quoted above are directly from the CDC. Also, I find it unlikely that a new variant would do more hard to younger people with stronger immune systems than older people. In the US, doing the rough math 8000 deaths in the age bracket cited above while tragic comes out to about 22 people under 40 per day. Hardly worth rushing to get a new vaccine in my opinion. Type "Covid variants young people" in Google and you will find tens of articles discussing how some new variants are making young people sicker and even increasing mortality rates. Cheers! I did as you suggested and looked that up. Really saw articles saying what "could" happen. The reality which is what we know is that based on the facts younger people are basically not dying here. This is like someone suggesting a stock and saying google "buy name of company". Again, I say lets look at the reality-22 people a day in the United States---very sad but hardly an extraordinary number. https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-variant-in-u-k-probed-for-increased-risk-to-younger-people-11611661304 https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/12/data-reveal-deadliness-covid-19-even-young-adults https://interestingengineering.com/uk-study-shows-new-covid-19-variant-spreads-faster-affects-younger-people https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/15/uk-study-finds-kent-variant-may-be-70-more-deadly Just a few found in minutes. Cheers!

I think you can equally use this argument against gun control. Guns have been around for even longer than a year. And in 2015, about 13,286 died as a result of being shot, so certainly not more than 13,286 people died of being shot in the head. And there are about 330M people in the USA. Therefore, if you're shot in the head, you have less than a 0.004% chance of dying. There's basically almost no chance of dying if you're shot in the head. Thanks! I need that! Cheers!

First Google hit: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1111779/coronavirus-death-rate-europe-by-country/ Worst European country is Czech republic with 233 deaths per 100,000 population. That is 0.23%. Want a more average case? How about Germany with 90 per 100,000: 0.09% US lies between those two with 0.16% (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_death_rates_by_country) That same source has Canada at 61 per 100,000: 0.06% Those are far lower numbers than 0.5% already. On top of that, those percentages are for the entire population! Older people are the vast majority of those deaths. Let's take the US (not to cherry-pick). If we take https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863 for example that shows that 1.7% of the deaths in the US concerns someone under 44. 0.017*0.0016 = 0.0000272, so an average American under 44 has 0.00272% chance of dying from Covid -19 (about 1 in 36,765) And I didn't even filter out the morbidly obese and those with lung disease, those with compromised immune systems etc yet! To be able to calculate further I'll assume filtering that out lowers the factor by another factor 50-100 (same factor as the age filter, no uncorrelated data is available). Leading to a chance to die of Corona for an average healthy American of between 1 in 1.8M and 1 in 3.6M That's comparable to the chance that an average commercial airplane flight results in a fatality (estimation by aviation consulting firm To70 see https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/fatalities-on-commercial-passenger-aircraft-rise-in-2018.html): 1 in 3M So who's being facetious? Or are you also scared of flying? The chance of death is remote and the only thing happening is fear mongering. Your assuming that everyone has been infected by using the deaths per 100,000 number. In Canada, it shows 22K people died out of roughly 1M people infected. You cannot divide the 22K by the population of the country and assume that is the mortality rate. That's ridiculous! Even if you assume that 5 times as many people had Covid and recovered, you still have a mortality rate of 440 out of every 100,000 people. And I'm being generous in assuming that 5M people have been infected out of Canada's 32M population. This is just basic math! Cheers!

Cool, now try doing the same with "the earth is flat" and "5g kills". Stop being facetious! I'm not asking you to read any article...pick and chose the sources you feel comfortable with from all of those articles...whether it's the Harvard Medical Journal, World Health Organization, The Lancet, Vancouver Sun, Washington Post, any global news outlet or source...whatever you want. Cheers!

With all due respect: do you think you have ANY clue regarding side effects at this point? Regarding the individual we know there don't appear to be a great many immediate side effects. That is all we know. I'm not saying there will be terrible side effects: I don't know. But I think you are making a logical error here in assuming chances for that are so incredibly low. You are also using wrong numbers: I do not have 0.5/100 death chance. I would argue significantly lower than 1 in 1 million. (1 in 10 million seems the right order of magnitude for myself given the data). There are tens of articles, from media and scientific journals, estimating the mortality rate of Covid is around 0.6-0.7% with data backing up those conclusions...I gave you the benefit of the doubt and said 0.5%. How the heck do you get 1 in 10 million...is that conjecture, or do you have any ACTUAL data that supports that?! Regarding the effect to the population you are blindly assuming it to be positive. 1. As far as I've seen there is (as of yet) no evidence those inoculated no longer carry and spread the virus (please point me to a source if this has changed?) 2. As I wrote earlier that apparently it's immunology 101 to NOT vaccinate during an active outbreak as this will risk making the virus more dangerous. You wait until the outbreak dies down and start the vaccination scheme afterwards. Why isn't that game plan followed today? Why take the risk to make the virus actually dangerous? (with actually I mean more than influenza, which society has learned to accept as a part of life). I'm afraid the answer can be again found in political reasons (inaction is punished in society while action is rewarded, even if inaction is superior) 1. No that is correct. But if you are inoculated, you have less than a 10% chance of contracting the virus. Israel is nearly 100% vaccinated. Take a look at the daily stats trajectory since they started inoculations in December. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/ 2. Sorry to tell you, that's not immunology 101...not sure where you got that from. Perhaps the reason for your opinion is that you fell for mental shortcuts? In most of your life those refusing to vaccinate do so for illogical reasons (claiming it gives them autism or something equally unlikely) and now you think that is the case again. Taking the mental shortcut that those refusing to vaccinate are simply dumb/uneducated. I would argue circumstances are very different here and therefore require a different response. I'm actually providing you numbers. I have not seen any numbers backing your theories. Cheers!

Wasn't Fauci specifically guided by the administration to play down Covid? And if people don't want to believe Fauci, how about every other health minister in every other developed country tackling the problem? Cheers!

Hi SouthernYankee, please don't take any offense. That argument would be ok if your choice in not taking the vaccine had no impact on others...say like getting a stent put in or not, because you have a clogged artery, or not getting chemo because you have cancer. But this is far more impactful and detrimental than even second hand smoke in how you affect others around you...unless you stay in your home locked up and never seen anyone again. I think that is the main point anyone in favor of inoculation is making...not the statistics, politics, etc. Simply that the more people vaccinated, the less likely vulnerable people will die from Covid by being exposes to others. And we've seen how variants are affecting younger, healthier people...so it is no longer just the old and immune compromised anymore. Cheers! Agree with Southern Yankee. The stats generally point to older folks (65+) or those with pre-existing conditions being the most vulnerable. It may sound selfish but if you are vulnerable the onus is on you to protect yourself. The overwhelming majority of young people recover pretty quickly (less than 2 weeks from Covid). In the US a country of about 320 million (fairly large sample size) only 8000 people under 40 have died according to the CDC. The covid vaccine was rushed to market for obvious reasons and nobody can be sure what effects if any might exist long term. If there was more science/data to support getting the vaccine I probably would. However, when the average FDA approval takes 4-8 years depending on the source to reach stage 4, I think I have a right (maybe an obligation) to be skeptical of a vaccine that went through all the steps in under a year. Stay safe and healthy--your body, your choice. Generally vaccines take that long because of limited dollars and extensive volume trials. But this was a pandemic and they essentially threw unlimited resources at it and fast-tracked emergency approval guidelines on clinical trials. In other words, the possible side effects and risks, were outweighed by the risks and deaths from not using the vaccine against Covid. You now actually have far more data, which has been extensively analyzed by experts around the world, than any trial would provide...and the results are the vaccines are effective and have limited side effects. Regarding age...some of the new variants are having a greater impact on those between 30-50, including higher mortality. So just because one variant affected older and immune compromised patients dramatically, doesn't mean a new variant could not pose a threat to the healthy and younger subgroups. And we know that the current vaccines are having some protective effect against some variants. Will that last...we don't know...but so far it is working. Cheers! Regarding the vaccine and side effects...in the short term sure you may well be right. In the long term we have no idea because the vaccine has not been used that long. Regarding age....no idea where you are getting those figures from. The deaths quoted above are directly from the CDC. Also, I find it unlikely that a new variant would do more hard to younger people with stronger immune systems than older people. In the US, doing the rough math 8000 deaths in the age bracket cited above while tragic comes out to about 22 people under 40 per day. Hardly worth rushing to get a new vaccine in my opinion. Type "Covid variants young people" in Google and you will find tens of articles discussing how some new variants are making young people sicker and even increasing mortality rates. Cheers!

Hi SouthernYankee, please don't take any offense. That argument would be ok if your choice in not taking the vaccine had no impact on others...say like getting a stent put in or not, because you have a clogged artery, or not getting chemo because you have cancer. But this is far more impactful and detrimental than even second hand smoke in how you affect others around you...unless you stay in your home locked up and never seen anyone again. I think that is the main point anyone in favor of inoculation is making...not the statistics, politics, etc. Simply that the more people vaccinated, the less likely vulnerable people will die from Covid by being exposes to others. And we've seen how variants are affecting younger, healthier people...so it is no longer just the old and immune compromised anymore. Cheers! Agree with Southern Yankee. The stats generally point to older folks (65+) or those with pre-existing conditions being the most vulnerable. It may sound selfish but if you are vulnerable the onus is on you to protect yourself. The overwhelming majority of young people recover pretty quickly (less than 2 weeks from Covid). In the US a country of about 320 million (fairly large sample size) only 8000 people under 40 have died according to the CDC. The covid vaccine was rushed to market for obvious reasons and nobody can be sure what effects if any might exist long term. If there was more science/data to support getting the vaccine I probably would. However, when the average FDA approval takes 4-8 years depending on the source to reach stage 4, I think I have a right (maybe an obligation) to be skeptical of a vaccine that went through all the steps in under a year. Stay safe and healthy--your body, your choice. Generally vaccines take that long because of limited dollars and extensive volume trials. But this was a pandemic and they essentially threw unlimited resources at it and fast-tracked emergency approval guidelines on clinical trials. In other words, the possible side effects and risks, were outweighed by the risks and deaths from not using the vaccine against Covid. You now actually have far more data, which has been extensively analyzed by experts around the world, than any trial would provide...and the results are the vaccines are effective and have limited side effects. Regarding age...some of the new variants are having a greater impact on those between 30-50, including higher mortality. So just because one variant affected older and immune compromised patients dramatically, doesn't mean a new variant could not pose a threat to the healthy and younger subgroups. And we know that the current vaccines are having some protective effect against some variants. Will that last...we don't know...but so far it is working. Cheers!

Hi SouthernYankee, please don't take any offense. That argument would be ok if your choice in not taking the vaccine had no impact on others...say like getting a stent put in or not, because you have a clogged artery, or not getting chemo because you have cancer. But this is far more impactful and detrimental than even second hand smoke in how you affect others around you...unless you stay in your home locked up and never seen anyone again. I think that is the main point anyone in favor of inoculation is making...not the statistics, politics, etc. Simply that the more people vaccinated, the less likely vulnerable people will die from Covid by being exposes to others. And we've seen how variants are affecting younger, healthier people...so it is no longer just the old and immune compromised anymore. Cheers!

Amen! Wouldn't that be great. For now, it seems as though this may be an annual inoculation due to the variants of the virus...not unlike the annual flu shot. But we can hope and aim for it! Cheers!

I'm 51 and won't be eligible till some time late next month or early May in British Columbia. Canada has been slow to vaccinate, with only about 11% done so far. Cheers!

Why get inoculated for polio or hepatitis? Because the cost/benefit ratio is extraordinary. Cause Polio is actually dangerous and the available vaccines are well tested and in use for a long time (making the chance of unknown long term side effects negligable). I'm innocolated for a number of other dangerous deseases (the ones that I'm likely enough to run into) with tried and true vaccines available. I don't take vaccines for non-dangerous deseases, it' much wiser to let your own imune system handle it. It's not like I get the yearly flu shot (do you?) and influenza viruses are generally much more dangerous than Corona viruses. Furthermore the available deseases are not even out of stage 2 testing.And we didn't even start talking about possible unknown long term side effects. In fact, I would call taking this vaccine reckless if you fall outside the primary risk groups (and unwise otherwise). I consider injecting your children with this failing at your parental duty of care. The politicians are also highly reckless in my opinion. Vaccination 101 is that you don't start vaccinating during an active outbreak as that risks strengthening the virus. Aren't we in one right now? Dangerous game they are playing with all of our futures ... I don't take issue with you being concerned about taking a new and unproven vaccine. I do take issue with underselling the dangers of Covid though. With 550k dead in the US in just a year, and near 3 million worldwide, I would think this has proven far deadlier than polio ever was. And while polio paralyzed just 0.5% of people who caught it (see attached), Covid is estimated to cause long term cardiovascular and/or respiratory issues for up to 1/3 of people who have had it regardless if the severity of symptoms (source is CDC). And we still really don't know how severe that impact will be or HOW long it lasts. So we can stop pretending like Polio was this big bad thing and Covid isn't. Covid, by the numbers, is way worse The problem is that there is an inherent skepticism for science and statistics. Masks, vaccines, etc seem no different among the skeptics than when they first heard about smoking being dangerous to your health. It took decades to convince the skeptics. We're expecting Fauci and others to convince these similarly-minded people that Covid is bad in less than two years. It just won't take with them. Even though today, smokers are about as rare as a poodle with a mohawk, some continue smoking decades after the statistics were more than proven and they are treated as pariahs in society. There will always be the diehards...but if you can get the bulk of the population to change behavior, get inocculated, etc...it still ends up benefitting society overall. Cheers! Dude now I am taking offense. I am a scientist by education and trade. The scientific method is the best method of truthfinding. Trying to paint me (and all others with a similar opinion) as science sketics (I am sceptic of people not science) is intelectual laziness at best and blatant manipulation at worst. It's literally using ad hominems to "win" your argument (meanwhile use ad auctoritatems to make your own point). Please don't believe scientists blindly. Not everything they say is an outcome of the scientific method. They will also state things that are simply their opinion or make mistakes in study or analysis (papers on global warming tend to have large statistical mistakes mainly to do with statistical significance). Besides that, scientists are people with motivations: e.g. of selfish or political nature or coming out of fear. Stop worshipping people, that's an obvious mistake (look at history). Academia (not science!) is starting to take the position of organized religion in society based on how its used to contral people (not content wise of course). Trust the scientific method, not a group of people society declared defacto experts that can only speak truth. That is an extremely naive notion. (for a historic example look at the communistic revolution in Russia). Otherwise wouldnt all I say be true as well? ;) Finally @TwocitiesCapital I am most definitely NOT underselling Corona (Covid-19). First it is less lethal than many flu outbreaks that occured over recent decades (and before you say: of course individual flu outbreaks tend to be more local, but there's a lot more of them). Second: really, for people outside the risk groups you consider Corona dangerous based on the statistics? Now you are just being dishonest in an attempt to convince others (or you actually haven't analyzed the data in the proper context). You lethality argument only has one little flaw: since nobody had any kind of immunity there was, and still is, the possibility of a system overwhelm. Over here (even with masks, movement restrictions, healthcare professionals in vaccination process and commerce restrictions) we had it last january. It is ugly, lethality rose and in the absence of measures things would only have been worse. Get a truly overwhelmed system and the 0,6 or lower mortality will easily rise over 3% or even more (people waiting for death outside emergency rooms due to lack of space, people inside being chosen to live or let die, hospital oxygen systems collapsing (!!!)). Yes this is not the US, but the healthcare system is probably the best thing in this country, and still collapsed. And then you have people dying from other diseases because of coronavirus overwhelm (these don't show up n the statistics). And people who decide the will rather die at home than waiting outside an emergency room... in a system overwhelm even low risk groups are at risk Nobody has (any) immunity? Against a Corona virus? Really? Are you serious right now or taking the piss? :/ Edit: For people reading actually wondering: With no immunity there'd be extinction rate death rates just like when the conquistadors introduced the flue and common cold (Corona) to the new world. Why do people THIS unknowledgable are unaware they are unkowledgable AND like to spread their distorted views for absolute truths. It'd be hilarious if it wasnt so sad and scary. Hi Wachtword, Assume you are 100% correct. Negate the argument on levels of immunity...just ignore it for now. Are you going to say that the health system in most countries right now aren't overwhelmed by Covid cases, and indirectly taking an effect on non-Covid cases? I have an uncle on life support right now, because two days ago, he fell off the commode next to his bed in intensive care after a heart attack, hit his head, and no one found him for over an hour. He actually died and they brought him back a couple of times. The hospital where he is at is completely overwhelmed with Covid cases, as is most of Canada's healthcare system, and that is affecting the care of other patients. On top of that, my aunt...the only family member allowed to see him...is only allowed to visit her husband for two hours, twice a week! We've also had millions and millions of people inoculated now with three different well-known vaccines. There are some side effects from one, with a 1 in 1000 occurrence of blood clots. The other two have had fewer side effects and complications. Are you suggesting that the vaccine poses a greater risk at that level of occurrence (1/1000), compared to immunizing the bulk of the population where death from Covid is around the 0.5/100 incidents? Cheers!

First, I didn't say you should take the vaccine...that's your choice. And I certainly wasn't specifically talking about you...so not sure why you flipped out on me. Second, your discounting the opinion of all health officials in virtually every country around the entire world. Again your choice. Lastly, I said that getting the bulk of citizens inoculated will benefit society, even if others don't get it. Again, no mention of you or anyone specifically. Cheers!

Why get inoculated for polio or hepatitis? Because the cost/benefit ratio is extraordinary. Cause Polio is actually dangerous and the available vaccines are well tested and in use for a long time (making the chance of unknown long term side effects negligable). I'm innocolated for a number of other dangerous deseases (the ones that I'm likely enough to run into) with tried and true vaccines available. I don't take vaccines for non-dangerous deseases, it' much wiser to let your own imune system handle it. It's not like I get the yearly flu shot (do you?) and influenza viruses are generally much more dangerous than Corona viruses. Furthermore the available deseases are not even out of stage 2 testing.And we didn't even start talking about possible unknown long term side effects. In fact, I would call taking this vaccine reckless if you fall outside the primary risk groups (and unwise otherwise). I consider injecting your children with this failing at your parental duty of care. The politicians are also highly reckless in my opinion. Vaccination 101 is that you don't start vaccinating during an active outbreak as that risks strengthening the virus. Aren't we in one right now? Dangerous game they are playing with all of our futures ... I don't take issue with you being concerned about taking a new and unproven vaccine. I do take issue with underselling the dangers of Covid though. With 550k dead in the US in just a year, and near 3 million worldwide, I would think this has proven far deadlier than polio ever was. And while polio paralyzed just 0.5% of people who caught it (see attached), Covid is estimated to cause long term cardiovascular and/or respiratory issues for up to 1/3 of people who have had it regardless if the severity of symptoms (source is CDC). And we still really don't know how severe that impact will be or HOW long it lasts. So we can stop pretending like Polio was this big bad thing and Covid isn't. Covid, by the numbers, is way worse The problem is that there is an inherent skepticism for science and statistics. Masks, vaccines, etc seem no different among the skeptics than when they first heard about smoking being dangerous to your health. It took decades to convince the skeptics. We're expecting Fauci and others to convince these similarly-minded people that Covid is bad in less than two years. It just won't take with them. Even though today, smokers are about as rare as a poodle with a mohawk, some continue smoking decades after the statistics were more than proven and they are treated as pariahs in society. There will always be the diehards...but if you can get the bulk of the population to change behavior, get inocculated, etc...it still ends up benefitting society overall. Cheers!

Sorry, I thought I could change the title color...but unfortunately, SMF only allows changing the post body text color. You can use icons that show up next to the title, so I used the lightbulb icon. With the new site, I believe we can change the title color. Cheers!

Yeah, I would prefer the same thread, but the problem is that people won't know which books have notes and which ones don't unless people check out each book thread. Cheers! Perhaps there is a way to flag threads in the title? A star, or different color text, or some other means, to indicate that someone has (generously) posted their notes. That's a brilliant idea! How about when someone posts notes to a book under the Book section, they can post it and make the book title a "red" color. That will let me know that notes for a book have been posted. I will then merge the notes into the original book thread and change the title "red". Readers will then know that a book title has notes if the title is "red". Does that work? Cheers!

Yeah, I would prefer the same thread, but the problem is that people won't know which books have notes and which ones don't unless people check out each book thread. Cheers!

Hi LongHaul, Not a bad idea, but the problem is then the Books section, which works kind of like the Investment Ideas section gets cluttered. What we could do is add a separate section called "Book Notes"...and then follow through with the title of each submission just like you suggested. The Politics Board will be deleted from the new Investment website, so we could replace it with the Book Notes Board. Does that work? Cheers!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man You can't fix stupid. Plenty of people lost cash money to Nigerian princes over email. Doesn't mean cash is bad. +1! Hilarious! Cheers!

I don't think anyone is mocking crypto itself...especially not me...I've followed the stuff before most of you even heard of it...PDH nearly bought a crypto related company 6 years ago (buy the infrastructure, not the currency). But I'm almost certain that this current batch of crypto (not supported by anything except an artificial scarcity of digital tokens), is not going to end well. Crypto will be the back bone of all financial transactions some time in the future, not dissimilar to how new the internet was 20 years ago and how completely enveloping it is today. But we aren't there yet, and this current batch of crap is is exactly that...crap...think of it as the the Apple Macintosh in its time compared to the iPhone today! One was famous and novel, one was ubiquitous and our life revolves around it. Cheers!

No, I think that time for Fairfax was back in 2003. The decision that we are no longer going to buy crappy insurers and turn them around led to the group of quality insurers they have today. The second part of that was making Andy Barnard in charge of all of the insurers. Even with Fairfax's more eclectic style of investing, the real culprit behind their underperformance has been due to betting against and shorting the market after 2009. They took advantage of the 50% correction, but started hedging and that really hurt their performance. Even with minimal exposure to the stock market, they would have done very well just in their bond investments, conglomerate investments and the equities they did invest in...excluding their shorts and market bets which cost them significantly. Maybe the decision to stop shorting is a step in the right direction...simplifying their portfolio decisions. Cheers! Sanj, please stop describing what FFH did as "hedging." More than 100% of FFH's equity portfolio was "hedged." When your hedge-ratio exceeds your exposure to the underlying (ie, more than 100%) that's called speculation. It was one of the investment decisions where the excessive position sizing reflected poor risk management. SJ They were bets on values regressing to the mean. Historically he was able to wait out Mr. Market and take advantage of volatility (see dot com and housing bubbles). Unfortunately, Mr. Market hasn’t cooperated for over a decade and Prem learned his lessons the hard way. Prem is smart. He learned. He’s not just another run of the mill, self-made, Canadian, multi-billionaire from India. And, he has formally, in writing, taken shorting off the table. I don’t think he is addicted to shorting or to shareholder lawsuits. This issue is easy to understand and was even easier to solve. He also knows he doesn’t have to juice earnings with shorts anymore, now that he has more good investment opportunities than he has capital (for the foreseeable future). Now, all he has to do is reward a bunch of all-star insurance and non-insurance managers/investors like David Sokol, Byron Trott, Wade Burton, etc if they can grow capital by more than 15%. If they can do it, they get more capital. If they can’t then they don’t. The real story of the last ten years was not the shorts. It was the global network of non-insurance capital allocators he has been assembling. The next ten years won’t look like the last ten years. And, the stock will trade above BV again soon enough. Yes, he's essentially got most of Peter Cundill's (Wade & Lawrence) proteges and Warren Buffett's (Sokol and Trott) proteges running money for Fairfax...plus all of the guys that learned at Prem, Brian and Roger's feet. That's not a bad group by any standards! The biggest concern on the investment front is who can do what Brian did all these years? Cheers!

I'm thinking about taking screen caps of posts on this board and selling them as NFTs with very reasonable prices starting in the low thousands. I'll even give Sanjeev 50% of the profits since it's his board. Anyone want to buy a NFT of one of their own posts from me? I'm in! God knows I would never profit from this sh*t otherwise. ;D Cheers!

+1! That's effing funny! Cheers!

No, I think that time for Fairfax was back in 2003. The decision that we are no longer going to buy crappy insurers and turn them around led to the group of quality insurers they have today. The second part of that was making Andy Barnard in charge of all of the insurers. Even with Fairfax's more eclectic style of investing, the real culprit behind their underperformance has been due to betting against and shorting the market after 2009. They took advantage of the 50% correction, but started hedging and that really hurt their performance. Even with minimal exposure to the stock market, they would have done very well just in their bond investments, conglomerate investments and the equities they did invest in...excluding their shorts and market bets which cost them significantly. Maybe the decision to stop shorting is a step in the right direction...simplifying their portfolio decisions. Cheers!