Jurgis

I think you missed the worst bit, which is: to even get on the plane for an international flight, you will have to get a medical certificate; get temperature checked at the airport, and queue for security in a socially distanced way. People are talking about a 3-4 hour process at the airport. This is the year for a staycation in your own country (at an extortionate price)! I think being branded a bio terrorist mid flight is worse than couple hour airport queue. ::) But you definitely have a point. #BuyTheFrickingPrivateJetRightNow #BerkshireNetJets

@thepupil - what do you think about OXY debt? I bought some close to the bottom, but not sure if it's worth holding as it has bounced to $80s. Still ~9% yield, but clearly not as attractive. I also hold some GPOR debt, so there goes my any credibility in energy debt investing.

I kind of hate the "well if he didn't buy this then..." analysis, but Akre has made his career buying/holding AMT (not unlike many great investors such as Graham (GEICO), Sleep Zakaria (AMZN/COST), etc. I am not saying that he/they are bad investors (they have absolutely kicked my ass and outperformed the S&P over the course of a great bull market). I just think that before you buy Akre, you have to have an opinion on the 12/3% position in AMT. they won't ever sell and it's an extremely "expensive" stock at $136 billion EV, which is 5x the gross value of its property, over half of which has been bought/built since 2012, 16x EV / 2021 Sales, 26x EBITDA, 24x FFO. I am just a bitter / jealous real estate oriented value guy whose index has AMT in it, so take my analysis as the sour grapes that it is. I have thus far resisted the temptation to short it as it's just one of these "inevitables/teflon" stocks. You can buy a lot of property for $136 billion. Yeah, it's funny: pandemic comes and they are teflon positioned for it with AMT. 8) Disclosure: I have started buying AKREX this year (before pandemic and during). This might mean that it will crash/underperform for the next 10 years+

In terms of what I am not doing for a long time: flying somewhere. Apart from being locked in a plane with hundreds of other people, I don't think I can handle having mask on for 4-6-10 hours. Plus the airplane air makes me sneeze profusely every time I fly. So I'd be considered bio terrorist half through the flight. ::) :'( #FirstWorldFlyingProblems

Thanks for posting. I'm gonna skip this one though.

Barron's on nursing homes: https://www.barrons.com/articles/coronavirus-is-tearing-through-americas-nursing-homes-peoples-rights-are-being-temporarily-suspended-51587722401

Nursing homes are getting infected with a large number of deaths in a lot of countries. And yeah, they are locked down across countries, but medical personnel and staff are contact points that carry the infection inside.

I think that's wrong conclusion to draw. Flu infections don't hit all at the same time as covid infections kinda did. Well, I was comparing the COVID timeframe, which is why I prefaced with "at its peak". Annually you can probably reduce that by a factor of 5-10. In NYC, weeks 12-15 COVID contributed aprox. 12,100 incremental deaths; compared to about 3,300 combined annual deaths from flu,pneumonia,chronic lower resp. diseases, and other respiratory diseases. Fair enough.

I think that's wrong conclusion to draw. Flu infections don't hit all at the same time as covid infections kinda did.

Perhaps they should borrow some Canadian geese that do this to most parks for free. But go Lund!

- Traffic definitely has picked up since the lockdown started. When lockdown started, streets were dead. Now we are still in lockdown, but traffic is ~50% volume (approximately). - We got single use masks sent by Amazon from Kentucky on March 27. Arrived yesterday. I already got refund for that. There are some issues with USPS I guess. - There was toilet paper in grocery store. Hurray! - Still waiting for toilet paper I ordered from Walmart.com - Standing in line outside the store to get into the store sucks. Soviet Russia is calling! - We are going for walks. Installed bird recognizer app that records bird song and does recognition. Cool stuff. - The town did leaf bag removal. I almost expected they gonna cancel this service. - I don't eat meat, but shop seemed well stocked despite the meat plant closures. - Our cashier in the grocery store was coughing. Oh well.... Goodbye CoBF.

Shopping (TJ Maxx) once a month or so choosing time when store is not packed (would hate to stand in line to enter the shop too). Nothing else really that we are not already doing. We are already going for walks, going grocery shopping once a week, going to hardware stores when we need something, ordering food for delivery. I will not do anything else (like meeting with friends, eating out, going to public events, going to activities where a number of people meet) until MA infections drop to ~200 per day and deaths drop to ~ <5 per day. ( https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-april-28-2020/download ). Or vaccine or cure is available. I may change my opinion though.

OK, so we are living in computer simulation. And whoever runs the simulation is having fun dickering with the viruses. Maybe the whole point of simulation is dickering with viruses and humans are just test subjects or sideshow.

How do you stop the oil rig workers from blowing up oil rigs? TERM LIMITS 1 & done.

I love how the thread title changed from "Let rentiers fail" to "Let renters fail". ::)

Pretty much this.

So many Darwin award candidates, so few viruses.

I am not sure what you are doing, but you should keep doing it. Peace brother.

Makes sense.

How much would you trust the test results? Serious question. See the Bayesian arguments + the (atrocious?) reliability rates of antibody tests.

Ship them to Lithuania! Or ship them to US! There was at least couple times there were no potatoes in the grocery store when we went there.

Economics is a harsh mistress. You might want to run a restaurant where your chef would like to eat and could afford it on chef's salary. You might want to run a restaurant out of love and do the best for your customers and staff. You may earn awards and a torrent of thanks and well wishes. But it's unlikely these patrons would have paid you 20-30% more so your restaurant would be rent-increase proof (if not Covid proof). Unfortunately, there's little space in the economy for businesses run out of love (unless they are also run out of deep pockets filled elsewhere). One could even argue that these destroy the business aspect for others who are trying to survive and run their places - whether out of love or out of business. Still sad. Short term, customers are the ones who win. Long term, the owners and the staff are people who lose. Covid only magnified this X-fold. It's not always this way. My partners and I are part of a community group that is helping 2 family-run community restaurants through Covid-19. Version 2.0 of the restaurants are both re-builds from the floor boards up, and will be re-starting life with recycled/upgraded equipment, zero debt, months of donated prepaid rent, and a direct line into a culinary schools flow of new graduates. Mom and dad retired, and their kids running the place, with business advice from 2 conseiller. SD Nice to hear.

Because Munger is old and tired and does not want the hassle and does not give a crap and feels no obligation to engage faceless horde of not-really-fans (hey just judging based on reactions to his interview)? And Ajit is not a spotlight seeker. Though it's possible Warren did not even invite him. It sometimes seems that people feel entitled to the day worth of entertainment. Warren is happy to oblige... so far. Also audio meetings suck. 8)

Economics is a harsh mistress. You might want to run a restaurant where your chef would like to eat and could afford it on chef's salary. You might want to run a restaurant out of love and do the best for your customers and staff. You may earn awards and a torrent of thanks and well wishes. But it's unlikely these patrons would have paid you 20-30% more so your restaurant would be rent-increase proof (if not Covid proof). Unfortunately, there's little space in the economy for businesses run out of love (unless they are also run out of deep pockets filled elsewhere). One could even argue that these destroy the business aspect for others who are trying to survive and run their places - whether out of love or out of business. Still sad. Short term, customers are the ones who win. Long term, the owners and the staff are people who lose. Covid only magnified this X-fold.

This is one I am unsure about too. Th NY antibody study with a 21% positive rate in NYC let’s me believe, that there will be too many active cases to prevent further spreading regardless of what we do with test and trace. The testing is probably capacity is probably 2 order of magnitude too lower to test most people if we open the economy, which we have to do no matter what, before the vaccine is a factor in 18 month (best case). So in opinion this means that we go down the path of heard immunity, at least in bigger cities, but most likely everywhere unless we constrain movement between states or even cities for 18 month. Now heard immunity or vaccines may or may not even exist or be feasible, but no matter, virtually everyone just isn’t get the virus in this case sooner or later. I would like hear different viewpoints on how we still contain this using test and trace from out current starting point of test capacity and the likely opening of the economy in May or early June. Also, I would like to hear if anyone thinks that schools can be closed for 18 month. Opening up a school (which can be staggered into kindergartens, elementary school etc) will simultaneously expose a large number of people to the virus and most likely create a significant spike in cases, no matter how we do it. Can we keep them closed? Should we? I don’t think we can, but others may have a different viewpoint. I guess you are saying that we cannot reopen and keep the R0 below one. And that any significant reopening (e.g. one that includes schools) will spread the virus across (most of) entire population if we look at ~12-18 month period. Unfortunately, this sounds a possible - and grim - scenario. Basically this will cause IFR deaths across 40-70% of population. Plus whatever non-fatal Covid aftereffects. I don't think I can suggest a way out unless cure or vaccine or both are discovered faster than in 12-18 months. You are quite possibly right that lockdown with R0 < 1 won't work for 12-18 months. Perhaps social distancing, hand washing and masks after lockdown will be enough to prevent full spread of the virus. Perhaps in US the car culture will be another factor to limit the spread. But I think I agree with you that it won't be easy to avoid bad scenarios if there's no cure/vaccine soon.