Jurgis

I think it's much higher than 2%. The reality is many people are sick and not dying of pneumonia - I would assume a portion of posters on this very thread are experiencing symptoms as well as the rest of the population, or had experienced symptoms in Jan/Feb and recovered. The first reported US case was January 21. This is an incredibly fast transmitting virus. The odds are, cases existed prior to Jan 21. And further, the odds are that the spread of this virus across the US was much faster than official reports claim. This is due to lack of testing i.e. lack of timely, accurate information. But ultimately, I agree w/ the principle of: better safe than sorry. For the obvious reason, and for the secondary reason as it provides a "trial-run" on a global basis for future pandemics. I am about 20% cash btw. If I didn't suffer from biases like anchoring and all that stuff I would think about 1/3 cash is the ideal amount right now. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 Question for you guys as I havent seem to be making any friends swimming against the tide! Above is the NEJM article on first case of corona virus. This is what I don't understand. First US case was January 20st, with 4 days of symptoms and as I have read this is a very fast transmitting virus. Some have said this is very fast, some fast, symptoms take a while to show up, agree. Please reconcile this for me. It has been exactly 2 months since this gentleman returned to the US from wuhan China. Is it out of the way to assume that there was community spread with this gentleman? 4 days of cough, fever, flew on a plane? Lets just work on that premise. Now I have become lost with all of the projections, graphs, charts, etc. Pick whatever model you want. My question is this: Its been 2 months since that virus was officially detected in a known area. I'm not aware of this so please help. Is there overload in the area where this gentleman was? Are there people dying? What does it look like? Are they running out of ICU beds? How is california? They were not far behind and have a HUGE population! I know there can be a delay in symptoms but isnt 2 months long enough for this virus to really get going, especially with lockdown, social distancing just happening now? 55 days from Jan 20 to March 15. Assuming doubling every 4 days, you have a bit less than 2^14 = 16K cases in US right now. But then you told us that you knew how to do math...

Not afraid of Covid-19. Protected by Smith & Wesson.

This one is very comprehensive. Unlike the others it also shows number of deaths plot, which is unfortunately also exponential so far.

Fact.

Governments are always too slow to act. Travel ban from Europe to America could have had great public health benefits. It should have been enacted in 1492.

Our supermarket was emptied today. No toilet paper. (As another indication of our idiosyncratic tastes, almost everything we needed to buy was available.) Walked by neighborhood restaurant in the evening. It was still pretty full. I don't think we have a serious panic (yet).

Unbelievable. No, it's totally British approach to things. ::)

On Fridays the 13th only too. Why bother with other days.

He also left MSFT board, so it's not BRK specific. But I don't like it anyway. IMO Gates >> Chenault.

Nah. These people are Americans. They will throw out all they bought into garbage. Not toilet paper, but perishables (pasta, beans) pretty sure. Apologies to people who do not throw away tons of stuff.

Not true. In Lithuania you can get priority care if you bribe medical personnel. Including critical care cases. I'm pretty sure that's true for quite a few countries.

Why? Anyone who has been indexing and continues to DCA and index will do quite well. Possibly better than high percentage of people from CoBF (as we have seen with past polls).

I agree with you in spirit, but take a look at my post above and tell me if I'm missing something. I think we're just a bunch of blindfolded analysts feeling around an Elephant. Orthopa may have just been too busy hanging around down there by tail to get around and explore the other parts. I don't think your post (which is good IMO) contradicts what Schwab711 is saying. The problem is that we cannot prove the "more testing does not help" people wrong, since we don't have two parallel universes where US tested in one but not tested in another and results are clear. (Even if we had, they'd say "it's a different universe! Testing won't help in ours!") We can point to S. Korea, but the answer from no-testing-benefit camp is "but that's not US... and they all gonna die/recover anyway".

Hmm, is NetJets a success currently? I remember it was not doing great at some point. I think it's too small to be mentioned anymore, so probably we can't know how it is doing.

He said it was unlikely and cited the reasons why its complicate for BRK to buy one. I left with the impression that he might consider it in extraordinary circumstances. Yeah, he's too smart to not leave himself an out. I'll bet that he won't. See him buy airline tomorrow. 8)

He explicitly said he won't buy an airline.

You think Buffett would buy E&P even if it is cheap? I'd think it's too commodity and too future-uncertain. BTW, I think he might buy OXY notes or prefs or even stock as a trade. But not whole co.

Now I am concerned. :-\

Interesting question is what Buffett could be buying instead? There are only few banks that he might be buying without crossing 10%. Same with airlines. If he's buying AAPL, that's huge balls considering his existing position. What else?

No, just hodl dyno-coin.

Didn't you just say: ? Yep---that's the dumbest purchase ever, but if you look up thread a few pages, you can see the previous discussion. I will personally be looking at puts for companies I think are going to zero. OK. Got it. Your question was just trolling. ::)

Didn't you just say: ?

You haven't seen extinction level event until you have seen zombie apocalypse. ... Although on some days I'm not sure if we haven't been invaded by zombies already. ::)

Easily understandable. This situation is just like Huawei. We all know that BYD is an agent of the Chinese government and it will surreptitiously insert a whole host of sensors and cameras into the hopper of the garbage trucks to read all of the sensitive information off of our garbage. This information will be transmitted back to the Chinese government who will undertake nefarious acts with this ill-gotten intelligence. At least the US government is on top of this one! SJ Now they are stealing our garbage? I knew it! Devious communists: first they refuse to import our garbage while getting paid for it, now they steal it without getting paid. ::)

This was posted in another thread, but I think it should be posted here too: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/young-people-capitalize-cheap-coronavirus-flights-if-i-die-i-n1154326 YOIO Containment be damned.