Dalal.Holdings

I really hope this is not true... If we expect that infections in the United States are recent (ie. orthopa's theory about millions having this for months is false), then sudden increase in ICU patients/mortality will be seen 2-3 weeks from when people caught the infection. That means it will first happen in Washington State, then NY northern suburbs/parts of CA....then other places throughout... It's only Mar 15th and most infections in U.S. likely are new...

Exactly. The virus is really getting going and there is a lag of, say 6 weeks, until you see the deaths. There is widespread, undetected, uncontained community spread in the US. Canada is seeing that when we test people coming from the US. Major parts of the US will look like Italy shortly. Canada is probably a week or two behind the US. Q: if you start with 1 case and it doubles every 3 days, how long until we actually notice it? It will take many doublings until we feel it and news picks up. Furthermore if mortality is in single digits, it will take even longer for us to notice it. This has been here since January but exponential growth starts slowly with small numbers until they snowball and you can no longer ignore it. See my Berkshire example. To think that just because there were a few cases in Jan implies there were millions in the U.S. at that time is a major major stretch. Ok so we will say it doubles every 3 days, so its been 2 months. Thats 20 doubles? So your comfortable with saying there reasonable suspicion there are 1,048,576 infections in the area alone where this gentleman is with no apparent stress on the healthcare system. And that being said there is still the rest of the state to be counted and so far 60 deaths? Yes the power of doubling time is a sight to behold, ain't it! You're right if it were 3 days (which is a very aggressive estimate), it would be ~250k right now (not 1M) since first case Jan 20. In reality the doubling time is longer. And your original claim was that millions have had this for months was it not? The real world is quite messy--esp when dealing with small numbers. For example, what if those initial few cases back in January were mostly hermits who stayed indoors and played video games all day? The doubling time would be much longer than if they were instead yoga instructors. With exponential processes like this, there is a lot of randomness earlier in the course because there are fewer individuals involved. Once you get a critical mass, the trend gets smoother. But obviously you don't care about thinking about compounding on a higher level like you don't care about the Berkshire example. Your experience and that of the healthcare professionals you are in communication with trumps this kind of low level analytical thinking. Futures open in less than 40 min!

Better answer for him: "If you truly think the whole world is wrong and you are right, the futures market opens at 6 pm EST"

ROW confirmed infected just surpassed mainland China today. See attached chart.

That bat must've flown all the way from Wuhan to LA. If cases double every 3 days, it will take 18-21 days just to go from 1 case to 100 cases. It doesn't matter when the virus was "first here". It was first in China in November 2019 but hardly noticed until January because snowballing takes time.

Exactly. The virus is really getting going and there is a lag of, say 6 weeks, until you see the deaths. There is widespread, undetected, uncontained community spread in the US. Canada is seeing that when we test people coming from the US. Major parts of the US will look like Italy shortly. Canada is probably a week or two behind the US. Q: if you start with 1 case and it doubles every 3 days, how long until we actually notice it? It will take many doublings until we feel it and news picks up. Furthermore if mortality is in single digits, it will take even longer for us to notice it. This has been here since January but exponential growth starts slowly with small numbers until they snowball and you can no longer ignore it. See my Berkshire example. To think that just because there were a few cases in Jan implies there were millions in the U.S. at that time is a major major stretch.

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? The consensus for the origination of coronavirus is late November in Wuhan. It did not become a big deal until 2 months later. The way exponential growth works is that when you start with small numbers, it takes time for them to snowball into significant numbers. Once significant numbers are attained, then the growth becomes impactful and felt in a very real way. Berkshire Hathaway was a company not on too many people's radars in the 1960s and 1970s. Eventually it became impossible to ignore.

Incorrect. OK, sure. Let's exchange data Italy new cases: March 11: 2313 March 12: 2651 March 13: 2547 March 14: 3497 Italy deaths: March 11: 196 March 12: 189 March 13: 250 March 14: 175 What's yours? Don't get bogged down in the weeds. Updated statistics for Italy March 15 (which is not over): Italy New Cases: March 15: +3590 Italy Deaths: March 15: +368 :-\

Want to re-emphasize this great post. Stochastic simulation is a powerful way to understand what measures you can take to curb this disease progression. Anyone who says "I know what will work!" without running real simulations or consulting data from other countries with N>1000s is poking around in the dark. We cannot afford to listen to such people. This shows that social distancing (even with 25% of people not compliant) works even better than quarantines. If you combine social distancing with mass testing and quarantining of known positives (until they are "recovered"), it is likely to work even better.

South Korea's approach was very similar to Wuhan's from what I heard. Lots and lots and lots of testing and temperature taking everywhere, separating family members who are infected rather than at-home quarantine, etc. It wasnt just extensive testing, there was a lot of shutting down of things and shutdowns too, Real quarantine is essential. Self-isolation means you will just infect family and close contacts. South Korea did not have to impose lockdown as strict as Wuhan and Northern Italy. People self quarantined once they knew they were positive to reduce further spread. With or without self-isolation, the chance you infect people in your household is already very very high (after all, you are going to end up at home at the end of the day). The thing about testing people and letting them know they are positive is they can quarantine themselves from other people outside their household. The household catching it is a foregone conclusion, but reducing spread to new households is what we should be after.

There's a simple explanation: reliance on anecdotes over objective data, narrative fallacy, etc. Happens to a lot of clinicians because they see patients and extrapolate from those handful of clinical encounters to the larger population. Anyway--the rule is that if lots of people's lives are on the line, you should err on the side of caution ("prepare for the worst"), not assume "everything is going to be fine". Ie. board up your house even if it is 98% likely to be out of the hurricane's direct path. That's the precautionary principle in a nutshell.

Another (useless) graph for the "there's nothing we can do anyway" crowd. FYI South Korea achieved this WITHOUT A LOCKDOWN, but merely extensive TESTING. And South Korea's population is similar to Italy's. Source:

What I would recommend to a family member in your situation (take it with a grain of salt and follow your brother's own doctors' advice): 1 week of fever is nothing to dismiss without at least consulting a PCP. I would consider using acetaminophen to quell it if no contraindications and reach out to PCP if other symptoms (respiratory, etc) not as severe. If things are bad then urgent care/ED. I would give where ever you were going the heads up that corona may be an issue so they can give you precise instructions on how to arrive without potentially infecting others. The drive through testing is to be operational this week, but not sure how efficient it will be and your brother may have to wait in a car for a while in line if it is packed.

Important to clarify given the contradiction between the username and claims made on here.

Another Q: Usually when there is an impending crisis like a cat 5 hurricane about to hit your state, is it in the governor’s interest to get people in their state overly concerned or under concerned? Don’t know where you live, but New Yorkers are hard people to get concerned about things. Like I said, put your money where your mouth is and make some bets if you feel so confident.

Your right. 2 options. Do you think Cuomo is going on record saying that thousands likely had the virus, recovered, and didn't know it if it was highly unlikely? In this climate? At this time? Thats pretty ballsy isnt it? Maybe he was joking? Q for u: if millions caught this month ago and it is only 2-3x deadlier than the flu (an underestimate based on our current data), how many people would have died without a formal diagnosis (since we wouldn't have been able to diagnose) in the past 2 mo? How many ICU patients with ARDS would we have had? In order for your theory to work, you must be arguing that COVID19 is much much LESS deadlier than the flu <<< 0.1%. That is a bold statement to be making now and I know what I think of the odds of that being even remotely true. I think you just typed out the answer. Why aren't we seeing more dead people/ARDS? You cant say this virus spreads rapidly in one breath and will kill everyone and on the same hand keep saying, its coming, its coming, its coming. How can you use current data? S. Korea has 51 million people but tested 140,000. Thats .27% of the population. How can you honestly use that data? Your going to extrapolate that for the other 99.63% of the population? Really? Secondly I want an honest opinion about Cuomo. Why would he come out and say that? In NYC. During a pandemic with massive panic in society? I don't look to elected officials to form objective opinions about reality, leaving aside the fact that it is in their interest that people in their area take crises seriously. The financial markets are offering you many opportunities to get rich beyond your wildest dreams right now if you are really as confident as you seem about this.

That is the correct way to look at this--stochastic simulation. Here's another: People who are trying to project in their heads are kidding themselves.

Your right. 2 options. Do you think Cuomo is going on record saying that thousands likely had the virus, recovered, and didn't know it if it was highly unlikely? In this climate? At this time? Thats pretty ballsy isnt it? Maybe he was joking? Q for u: if millions caught this month ago and it is only 2-3x deadlier than the flu (an underestimate based on our current data), how many people would have died without a formal diagnosis (since we wouldn't have been able to diagnose) in the past 2 mo? How many ICU patients with ARDS would we have had? In order for your theory to work, you must be arguing that COVID19 is much much LESS deadlier than the flu <<< 0.1%. That is a bold statement to be making now and I know what I think of the odds of that being even remotely true.

The U.S. has a flu surveillance system that is in place. It looks out for reports of flu-like symptoms at healthcare sites around the country. There has been a recent increase in reports of symptoms similar to flu. It's strange that those arguing that the virus has been here for months and "millions already have it" cannot explain why there was no increase months ago when millions were supposedly catching this virus. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-14/flu-watchdog-spots-more-with-fever-and-cough-but-it-s-not-flu?srnd=premium

Incorrect.

So at this point you have two options as an investor: 1) Trust some guesses/major assumptions based solely on anecdotes from people that millions in U.S. have been silently infected for months now 2) Go by what is being witnessed in other countries at this very moment and acknowledge that the United States is merely a couple of weeks behind (relatively early in the course of epidemic) The more probabilistically likely scenario is obvious to me. A majority may show mild/flu like symptoms but even if a minority get very sick, we would certainly have seen a spike in unexplained ARDS cases across U.S. if millions were infected months ago... Inversion tells me #1 is most likely wrong.

The flu death rate is pretty well documented as somewhere around 0.1%. 20x seems like it could be correct, but potentially up to 200x worse than that?? I could counter your "Where's your data to support that", because that's way over the highest estimate made by anyone ever. 1. Flu is also a big deal, which just isn't properly covered by the media. So, when you read xxx people have died in a country from the corona virus, you think: that's a lot and start to panic; when xxx people die because of the flu, you will never know. 2. Corona virus is an ever bigger deal than the flu, because it can potentially in the future become much bigger as nobody got immunity (yet). When flu season hits, we do nothing except vaccinate some elder people with a vaccine that doesn't really work that well to begin with. This hits, and we shut down entire countries. I'd say that response from countries we are seeing over the last three days is proportional to this being a big deal. I agree. Fortunately, Europe has been taking action these last few days, lots of it in fact. I was under the impression the US wasn't far behind, but perhaps I'm mistaken. On 3/6/20 WHO CV situation report stated that the common flu has a death rate well below 0.1%. Here they show the CFR of ~0.055% for 65+ year olds in the Americas: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/ Here are the numbers for China: https://twitter.com/YoloCapMgmt/status/1238954857949585408 Yeah, it's much less than 0.1%, but rounded up to 0.1% because the average person would not understand a number smaller than 0.1%... This is much deadlier than the flu and we have already refuted the "just another flu arguments" many times on here. Ignore those who make them.

Will do. Can't believe we have people still saying there is no advantage to acting early when we see countries coming out of this who acted early. And then going on guessing that there will be future outbreaks again and mutations/etc so why bother doing anything (absurd). There was also earlier the "they're old people who were going to die anyway" shocking mentality. The "we're all screwed anyway" mentality makes absolutely no sense (and some of these people were initially saying "no big deal, just the flu". And calling this a supply shock when it is clearly a demand shock... Absurd. Almost as absurd as comparing a passenger in your backseat to a cinder block and saying human bodies become projectiles in car crashes and that's why we have seat belts, but oh well--the absurdities keep coming.

No, the UK is very wrong about it (questioned by WHO and medical experts/epidemiologists). Furthermore, the NHS is unlikely to handle the strain from achieving herd immunity and the inevitable large number of patients who will require ICU beds/vents, but clearly you continue to ignore the very real notion of healthcare system strain from sudden surge of cases and the situation in Italy. Delaying cases out to the future confers many advantages, not just merely waiting for eventual treatment. Your guess about "probably just see new clusters" is just a guess. Like saying "if I get in a major crash I am screwed anyway so I do not need a seatbelt". Furthermore, even if there are clusters later, the risk of healthcare strain much lower as the old patients would be out of the hospital by that point and now immune.

Who you test matters. In S Korea, they are testing anyone and everyone. In Italy, it's just symptomatic/"high risk" people (see also U.S.). This image shows there are a whole lot of people younger out there tested in S Korea who are likely asymptomatic/mild symptoms (hence not tested in Italy). These young people are likely unknowingly spreading disease to older/more vulnerable folks in Italy because they are never offered a test. In S Korea, they are actually aware they have COVID and therefore more likely to be careful (self quarantine, avoid parents/grandparents) and less likely to spread to others/more vulnerable people (less probability of further spread). This is one major benefit of widespread testing.