Cigarbutt

Disclosure: i've owned pharmacies (stocks) in the past, have followed the sector including CVS and Walgreens for a while and have recently looked into the business fundamentals of home deliveries for grocery stores. Short version: the business environment is changing and the home delivery's market will rise but, unless there's something very specific and very special about NowRx, the prescription delivery market is getting very crowded, some larger players are getting involved and, in the end, the end-consumer will capture the value of the commoditized service. Longer version: Online delivery is nothing new but perhaps we've entered a phase with a different slope. The prescription delivery market is getting a lot of attention (and capital). Competition is coming from many directions: the insurers, the wholesalers-distributors, the pharmacy retailers, and new ventures with deep pockets. For the grocery retailers i looked at, the stores simply need to adapt to evolving trends (some consumers will become on-line only and some will become hybrid consumers) but, in the end, they will end up selling as many products as before. Some grocers are deciding to develop in-house models and others simply outsource as there are many competitors available in most markets. For the prescription side of the industry, you have the additional dimension that pharmacy retailers will tend to lose business with online deliveries as they rely on the consumer to buy extra stuff on their way to the pharmacy counter placed at the back-end of the store. So pharmacies will try to fight this somehow. An interesting aspect for the prescription industry is that it's unclear who the consumer is (who pays) with the black-box value chain. An argument could be made that whoever has a profit opportunity within the chain may capture the value of the last mile delivery within its framework even if it has value for the end-customer and even if it is, by itself, a break-even type of proposition. i've looked at the PillPack model to some degree and they appear to be a potentially formidable competitor. https://people.com/lifestyle/amazon-pharmacy-pill-pack/

It seems to me you are using the same template. When trying to get accepted into a globally sought after program in 1984-5, part of the requirements was to write an essay, which contained four elements, the first of which was to make the world a better place. And that was before Micheal Jackson's Heal the World. Just like the singer's legacy though, which is troubled, you may want to remember that in 1984, a major non disclosed part of the effort was the strong desire to make money. A lot. But yeah, some of it is idealistically driven: There are people dying If you care enough for the living Make it a better place For you and for me, And the entire human race ----- So, back to people dying and the topic of school re-openings. Most countries (not all) that have re-opened schools have done well, with some measures in place (which is an important variable to account for). Based on some CDC stuff and unpublished data from Canada that was shared last Thursday (the children's hospitals in Montreal were the Canadian epicenters for Covid in children as our area shared many features with neighboring New York). Even reasonably adjusting for the measures in place during the earlier part of 2020, it appears that Covid is very benign in children (likely much more benign than the more typical flu), in terms of hospitalizations, ICU admissions and mortality. It also appears that they don't transmit well and simple basic measures probably bring the contagious risk to extremely low levels. In my area, many schools that have re-opened have reported active cases but most of these cases resulted essentially from outside community spread and not within school spread. It's fascinating that children, as a group, have little to gain from the restrictions but schools got "contaminated" by older champions who decided that it was time to karaoke..So, given the low risk for children and the mixed message on top, an aspect which is little discussed now is the distribution of eventual vaccines to the pediatric population, which is a critical link in reaching some kind of population immunity. Basically, one needs to drive the message that this could be a win-win but those messages don't work well in the populist marketplace. But as we enter the Covid fatigue part, there is hope. Last Wednesday night, i was part of an international webinar dealing (again) with the opioid crisis (i understand you live in BC or perhaps even around Vancouver so i assume that fentanyl means something to you). Interestingly, the presenters and participants were almost all North Americans. For the first time really, i detected a trend suggesting that's it's time to be optimistic, in a contrarian way, for this aspect absent another Dust Bowl episode. This is a typical multi-variable problem (multiple causes along the 0 to 100% personal responsibility ideological spectrum) and one of the problems was the prescriber. So, there are clearly signs that people are coming together and aiming in the right direction (and the numbers are starting to show it), at least for that component. There was even an obviously 'free-market' presenter who, at the conclusion of his talk, thanked the public institutions for a grant allowing to "test" some welcome changes.

The mental connection between the two bolded parts appears to be a huge jump to conclusion. The two links are interesting but offer only the beginning of the initial phase for a multi-stage thought process. The second link is quite anecdotal and observational and although limitations are mentioned, it suffers from the same fundamental flaws as the first link. In the first link (Dr. Meltzer is an interesting fellow), the good doctor appears to also stretch the validity and meaning of his conclusions although he timidly suggests that it's still early. In that Chicago study, the relative risk of being black (or at least non-white) is larger than the relative risk for vitamin D deficiency, at least from the data i was able to briefly look at. Why is this an issue? The underlying issue is that applying indiscriminately the logic suggested by the Chicago study, the reason why Black Americans caught more Covid and died more because of it, as well as poorer incomes, poorer education levels, higher crime rates etc would be "caused" by low vitamin D levels because of the convincing statistical correlation and vitamin D supplementation is the way to go. i get it that it's an interesting question but this issue should be handled with care. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/us/black-americans-hit-hardest-by-the-pandemic-feel-they-re-hurt-by-both-the-virus-and-inequities/ar-BB18H073?ocid=msedgntp if you are in charge of devising a study about vitamin D and go to the pictured family above, they may get what you are getting at if well explained and trust could be maintained but they would probably wonder if you are getting the full picture. Edit: BTW, a useful way to produce cost-effective science is to try to kill theses early. An interesting project here would be to devise a study with a rigorous design and compare two populations, one in Chicago and one in New Orleans and to try to control for all critical variables apart from latitude. This is interesting and may be a useful discussion if you remain Dr. Jekyll. It's not a binary question. Even if i deeply questioned Dr. Meltzer's judgement above, one can learn from stuff he's written over the years about incentives in healthcare. He describes that the healthcare market (and that includes vaccine development) in the US (like elsewhere to various degrees) has been negatively impacted by the negative aspects of both the 'market' and the 'government' and has suggested, using other words, that two wrongs don't make a right. Opinion: both sides of the equation can be improved and both sides need to be "checked" and "balanced".

We all delegate to third parties for many aspects of decision making and, as a result, our lives are way more enjoyable. A key aspect is trust. The anti-vaxxer movement has been growing significantly and the major underlying issue is decaying trust. One way to re-build the trust would be to maintain the integrity of the process and to improve, perhaps, the message. By 'injecting' undue political pressures into that process, there's the higher possibility that there will be issues with vaccine effectiveness and side effect profile, contributing to less trust. It can be some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. When it becomes advantageous to undermine institutions (media, science etc), a growing group of people may turn away from to those institutions, because of self-fulfilling trust issues. Who do they turn to? They turn to tribal leaders. One can become lazy as tribal leaders have easy answers and it's another kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is interesting work and results suggest that the idea is worth pursuing. Disclosure: i only spent about 10 minutes on this, this AM and the answer comes only now because i had a few things to take care of including an extended outdoor training activity where the sun was present about 50% of the time which likely helped with my own vit D levels. The negatives: Small numbers, not "blind" and others mentioned below. -Why were vit D levels not measured, at least at baseline? ---) this would have been easy to do and isn't this a critical component? -It would have been useful to include a more systematic description of CT-scans of the chest with a severity grading (to compare both groups) -Obesity or simply BMI was not considered even if it likely is an incompletely correlated variable with significant independent effect -The results seem too good to be true (it feels like seeing a growth stock with enduring moat selling at a discount to book value) Apologies for the geeky addition here but there is something that stroke me as very significant: the D-dimer levels. For the financially sophisticated who may have reached this far but who may not know the latest about D-dimers, here's a short summary. D-dimers levels, just like bradykinin, various cytokines and a long list of other candidates including vitamin D have been found to "say" something about the severity of the disease. It's like the Altman Z-score as an indicator of financial distress. Most would agree that correcting the inputs of the Altman Z-score that led to distress would have a tendency to improve both the score and the likelihood of downgrades or bankruptcies but this is creating a lot of confusion in Covid research at this point because most of the "markers" are very poorly understood. Some of these efforts feel like if one would try to mechanically improve the level of account receivables without understanding what drove the changes before. Anyways, the D-dimer levels tend to "say" a lot and elevated levels are bad for you. It's often part of a handful of variables that are included in a score that, for example, will give you an idea of the odds, upon "admission", that you will leave the ICU alive. Soooo, in this specific study, there a statistical artifice that suggests that the D-dimer levels are not significantly different but the visible difference suggests to discount the results to a significant degree. The mean level is significantly higher and the standard deviation is off the chart for the "untreated" group, suggesting that the group included a few people with very high D-dimer levels, perhaps explaining the poor outcome for those specific individuals. i really like the Andalucía region and have been to Córdoba (where the study was done) once. FWIW, their mosque is absolutely beautiful and represents a unique religious compromise from the the point of view of an inter-temporal architectural bipartisan agreement. Like for the rest of Spain, the vit D dietary intake tends to be low. Sun exposure is potentially very high in the Andalucía region but it gets so hot and the sun so strong during the day that often people avoid going out or go out covered. The area is still struggling with community transmission and further studies with more robust designs may provide more answers.

The US motor-vehicle fatality risk analogy is interesting. I can supply the methodology used but basically using a simplified residual quality-life loss of years concept, in 2020, the US ‘community’ will have lost a comparable number of quality-life loss of years (number of people who died x number of years lost) comparing Covid and motor-vehicle fatalities (also similar to yearly overdose deaths, although i’m not using this as a comparison point because certain participants in this thread may feel that ‘these’ people don’t deserve to live to start with). So it’s a huge deal in a way, especially if you or the ones close to you are directly involved but, from a population point of view, the US economy has been able to manage this yearly loss over time so it’s clearly not a statistic, in itself, that will significantly impact markets or your portfolios. An interesting aspect is that motor-vehicle fatalities have showed a significant improvement over time across developed countries including the US but the US (reasonably adjusting for differences, geography etc) has ranked relatively low in the peer group and the most important factor (again) is the impact of the perception of civil liberties at the individual level in tension with the notion of road safety for all. In other words, there is a tendency for citizens to downplay (definition of downplay: to make something seem less important or less bad than it really is) the risk of driving meaning that citizens will not have a tendency to show safety behaviors (positive or negative) in correlation to the real risk for themselves or other coincident users of the same roads. Another interesting (and encouraging) aspect is that the safety record has improved, on an absolute basis, to a very significant degree. The improvement has been driven by changes in attitudes and behaviors as well as vehicle safety technology and despite consideration for the described Peltzman effect, it appears clear that various policies that started to be applied in the 60s to this day have contributed to behavioral and attitude change feeding from the government to the individuals and vice versa resulting in a virtuous loop leading to positive cultural change. On a personal level, this is a rather unfortunate development as, for many years, a large driver of my revenues and operating margins were coming from traumatized patients due to motor-vehicle accidents. The most profitable clients were the ones most traumatized but not dead. To be clear, the last two statements, even if true in an economic sense, do not correspond to what I really think; I just wanted to feel like Gregmal for two sentences. Comparing the standard 1965 death to number of miles driven to the 2018 number (most recent I could find), the fatality improvement has reached about 80%! The areas that led to improvement were: speeding, drunk driving, compliance with seat belts and many behaviors related to testosterone. In the last few years, a relative plateau has been reached and this may be related to the disappearance of low-hanging fruits but especially to the relatively recent distracted driving related to cell phone use while driving. Absent this 80% improvement based largely on reasonable individual adaptation and cultural change, the number of American residual quality-life loss due to motor vehicle accidents would have been about 4 x larger this year than the equivalent toll for the 2020 Covid group. So yes you can. If you want to. Fundamentally, it’s about the integration of the individual into a community risk management strategy. And it really sounds like a path compatible with greatness, economic and otherwise.

i slept like a baby, thanks for asking. This AM, i walked with my youngest daughter on her way to the bus corner (first day of school for many here). It's really hard to be mad at life when seeing what she is becoming. FWIW, education authorities here (IMO) are navigating the return to school turbulence based on a reasonable course and a few compromises. It seems that they are using 'foreign' inputs for vicarious learning: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/01/898184566/how-denmark-is-thinking-about-reopening-schools-safely https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/switzerland-denmark-school-reopening-plan-covid-19-1.5683975 The importance of education can't be stressed enough. To learn the basics, ways to think, learn how to learn, rights and responsibilities of citizenship etc About the intensity of last night's exchanges, it happens rarely but, when it happens, my level of interest (for a person, an investment opportunity, a topic) can reach unusual levels and the coronavirus topic has been a relative focus lately. Hopefully, the exchanges are helpful for somebody. Helping others to help themselves tends to be productive while simply helping enters a territory of diminishing returns. And of course there's those that can't be helped.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/herman-cain-s-twitter-says-covid-19-not-as-deadly-as-media-implies-he-died-of-covid-19/ar-BB18BhaU?ocid=msedgntp Sad Here's a man, a real one, Who held to his strong opinions, Who clinged to his deep beliefs, Until the very end. Whatever it took. Was it in Tulsa? Or in Arizona? But in my book, A failure to mend, A foolish disregard for mischiefs, A blind faith to wrong convictions, And now he's gone. He was 74.

@cherzeca A definition for you, what is a weak argument? A weak argument is one which is illogical, impractical or irrelevant. You've managed to reach all three qualifiers in the last few posts. ::) Have a good night.

Exactly - one of the many "collateral damage" issues. So easy for politicians with safe jobs and pensions to legislate destruction for everyone else. Government needs to get out of the way. There you go again (both of you)! Assuming that "shut down" is a cause for the rise in the reported divorce rate and not an association, which requires a leap of faith (i guess the usual mode of reasoning for assessments), then you know you're in trouble if/when you realize that spending more time with your loved one will actually imperil your relationship. Did you know that divorce rates in the US went down during the Great Depression and increased significantly after WW2? Using the sophisticated causal assessment tool described in the post article, one perhaps should not have wished for the war to end then. So you are saying that job losses, destruction of family businesses, and economic hardship have no link to increased divorce rates? Sorry, I don't buy it. But reasonable people can disagree. No, that's not what i'm saying. i'm saying this needs to be analyzed and reasoned. Simply picking up some info and trying to make it fit into a pre-formed analytical grid that always spouts the same thing runs a high risk of coming up to the wrong conclusion. When trouble hits, sometimes it brings people together and sometimes it pulls them apart and maybe it's largely a communication problem. :)

Exactly - one of the many "collateral damage" issues. So easy for politicians with safe jobs and pensions to legislate destruction for everyone else. Government needs to get out of the way. There you go again (both of you)! Assuming that "shut down" is a cause for the rise in the reported divorce rate and not an association, which requires a leap of faith (i guess the usual mode of reasoning for assessments), then you know you're in trouble if/when you realize that spending more time with your loved one will actually imperil your relationship. Did you know that divorce rates in the US went down during the Great Depression and increased significantly after WW2? Using the sophisticated causal assessment tool described in the post article, one perhaps should not have wished for the war to end then.

No offense. There's nothing wrong with relevant and objective questioning of costs related to excessive restrictions on economic activity. But the collective decisions should not be based, in substance, on what you, cherzeca or your leader "believe", as trust is a depleting asset that needs constant replenishment. Sure, ways to re-open have to be considered but, at this point in your country, people are still dying from Covid every week or two (depending on age and other adjusted data) at a rate similar to the fatalities derived from the World Trade Center Disaster, resulting from a barbarian invasion and giving rise to a modern (and very expensive) crusade against the Axis of Evil. Have you recently met the enemy? Please explain not using an authority or a believe-me mantle. Take the obesity risk factor aspect, as specifically mentioned by KJP. How do you go about that? Age is the big factor but obesity is also very significant. There's this very recent report discussing the importance and relevance of obesity with significant risk for Covid (BMI above 30). And there's this CDC 2020 report that describes the obesity profile in the US. So will the criteria be to "isolate" the above 80, the immunocompromised, the obese and then what? https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200826083015.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db360-h.pdf

Too simple, makes too much sense... @cherzeca Reply #7449 was a second attempt at a constructive discussion. shame on me. Thanks for the post but your answer is an unsubstantiated opinion about an impractical plan. Your post does not help me in completing a retrospective review about what went wrong in my jurisdiction but helps to understand what happened on your side of the border as the fourth region (mid-west) is about to enter the last leg of the first phase. @cubspan Thanks for the additional and insightful analytical input. i'm quite dumb and like to read quotes i don't understand. Are yo aware of one of Einstein's quote that goes like this: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." A fascinating aspect is that the true quote apparently went like this: "It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience." So it looks like somebody aimed to make it simpler than it really is (the quote). ----- For those interested in outcomes based on common-sense applications of data and analysis: https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/statement-on-convalescent-plasma-eua/ While plasma treatment continues to hold potential applications for a variety of conditions, it's likely that future generations will look at this practice as an equivalent to drinking one's urine (disinfected or not).

Thanks for the post but by writing: "we could have been much more focused in our prophylactic effort, is all I am saying", you are not providing any specific insight about how the issue could have been handled differently from a "we" or from an individual perspective. The following shows the very unusual outcome related to excess mortality and even if the costs of lockdowns cannot be ignored and even if one should aim for the most productive measures under any circumstances or ideology, it is quite clear that the mortality bipolar curve would have been worse (much worse) without the nonspecific lockdown measures applied, measures which only supplemented spontaneous measures taken at the individual level. i'm all ears for alternative scenarios but the mortality curve shows significant failures for initial containment and persistent community spread over many months after. Taking into account the blended age mortality curves shown in the following link, what specific measures could have been taken in order to result in less mortality per cost of measures? Your common sense arguments often imply that lower cost measures could have resulted in lower mortality but, like a 5-year old, i'd like to hear the simple explanation. See "Provisional death counts for CV", by age group, interactive graph https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm This retrospective is fun and all but what counts is what's coming. We are going through the back-to-school phase now and there is potential for over-reaction. In a related way, the notion of herd immunity is important (herd immunity defined as a dynamic concept on top of natural immunity evolving according to spread, behavioral adaptations, seasonal factors etc). In this thread, i've come to think that your approach has been quite tribal (not tribal as way to say primitive for the sake of this specific post but as a way that you may tend to espouse all aspects of a certain ideology, even if not supported by facts or rational analysis). The following seems to indicate that certain graph directions can change once behavioral changes are modified (for example as an educated attempt to go back to school). Spain and France were significantly involved, with important community spread. Recently, their cases (and percent positive rates) have been going up significantly. This may simply reflect the inevitable episodic spikes which may punctually happen but the evolution of data strongly goes against herd immunity in areas that were felt to be hard-hit before. Apologies for the discomforting evidence. In this exchange with you here, i feel it causes similar distress as when you see a homeless taking a dump on your way to Zabar's. You may wish that the data or analysis did not exist. Data/analysis that is ignored or displaced continues to exist unless root causes are addressed.

So, where do you draw the line and proceed surgically to cut into the mosaic? Magical thinking not allowed and please consider that the granularity and relative precision of data now is much less uncertain than in late Feb or early March. And also note that there are occupational risk factors and, as a separate risk factor, it's been shown that inadequate medical coverage is also a relevant risk factor (during Covid, it's been reported that health coverage was significantly insufficient for at least 40% of your fellow citizens).

Apologies for the interference with what appears to be a very instructive exchange. From an evolutionary point of view and from a certain detached economic standpoint, aiming to acquire herd immunity can make sense but there are consequences. However, there is a problem when the consequences are not understood or ignored. No? Anyways, the evolving "strategy" is exemplified by a recent addition in the expert task force: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/politics/new-trump-pandemic-adviser-pushes-controversial-herd-immunity-strategy-worrying-public-health-officials/ar-BB18xMz7?ocid=msedgntp Opinion: It's not necessarily the strategy that cannot be defended, it's the way the strategy is understood or explained. It's very hard to reconcile at a time where financial risk has become socialized to such an extent. Here's another set of data showing how Houston, for example, is not so different from NYC. Some states may have had slightly less economic interference for a while but most areas are pretty much on the same page at this point for several variables although the period during which excess mortality will have been recorded for the whole territory will be unusually exceptional. @Castanza (if you made it this far) Your comment about the 94% prevalence of co-morbidities is interesting although i wonder if you mean that in the long run we're all dead. If you fill a death certificate for a 20-year-old who just died from a motorcycle accident or a few bullets (outside of conspiratorial reports), only one line is likely to be filled. In that case, you end up with an expected residual life expectancy loss, which is large. When some people (a very significant proportion of US citizens have one or two risk factors and quite a few have more; the added risks with age give rise to an exponential curve of mortality) with risk factors "caught" Covid and ended up in hospital because of the virus, these people had underlying chronic conditions which already curtailed their residual life expectancy but, in some cases, the virus triggered complications (renal failure, vascular events etc) that would probably not have occurred absent Covid but still ended up on different lines on the death certificate. All that to say that, in the aggregate, the typical (median, average or whatever) person (out of the total that your country has reported, subject to upward adjustments) who died from Covid as a primary and proximate cause of death had much lower residual life expectancy compared to the twenty-year-old but what is the value of residual life and who's to decide? This is one of the reasons why the Spanish Flu was so devastating unless you belong to the group who says "let's bring it on, i can take it" and who realize (consciously or not) that the 1348 Black Death did wonders for wages (for those who survived).

^There was an interesting discussion about the Yen debt issue last September in this thread and gfp had contributed interesting insights. This is simply speculation and the debt may have been raised simply because of the ultra-low yields but even if agnostic about currency movements in general, i would say that investing in Japan now needs at least some consideration for unusual Yen depreciation. The timing and size of the debt issue in relation to the basket investment would tend to support this thesis. Even if seen through the lens of a debt-funded and currency-hedged investment, it's reasonable to think that the move was merit-based from an opportunity cost point of view. Looking at stakes in the Japanese companies and the basket approach, this reminds me of the float investments made at Blue Chip Stamps in the early 70s when some of the float assets were moved from fixed income to a basket of safe stocks (in this case with the potential currency effect neutralized). Even if the move is considered "small", isn't it interesting that, from an opportunity cost point of view, this is the best that Mr. Buffett could do? not only in the US but also on a global basis?

The following is interesting in terms of potential lessons that could be learned. It's about the Japanese experience in nursing homes. Many factors in play: the institutional host ready before (nursing home infrastructure, general cultural traits etc), better risk-factor profile despite older demography, others https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/japan-has-the-world-s-oldest-population-yet-it-dodged-a-coronavirus-crisis-at-elder-care-facilities/ar-BB18wdif?ocid=msedgntp Interestingly, given the strength of the institutional host and tradition, it appears that the relatively low use of masks, in that specific context, did not result in spread of the virus to the elderly. The author seems to suggest that doing the right thing in the first place may contribute to a better outcome and i wonder if those in charge of macro-prudential policies have to something to learn here.

An aspect of the conscious or unconscious appreciation of the House edge as a pure mathematical disadvantage is that people, often, compound the issue by adding the dimensions of the gambler’s and the hot-hand fallacies. The added dimensions do not change the mathematical outcome but tend to reinforce the notion that people have some form of control on the outcome. Another interesting feature is that, when casually discussing the outcome of casino adventures, i only come across the 50%-edge of people who actually “won”. i wonder to whom the other people go to in order to share their experience. Most people probably spontaneously noticed the mathematical error (apparently a common conceptual difficulty for the common player) in the previous statement, assuming the players stay long enough at the table(s). Gambling is an odds game and it’s difficult to see how skill can make a positive difference. This concept though is a reminder on how hard it is to beat the market over the long term, especially when adjusted for the skill-edge-fee effect. It is said that 80 to 90% of funds report inferior results (vs the indices) over the long term. i wonder how i end up reading only the prospectus that say they will.

... When referring to the "directional linear path", instead of a war-type mentality, i wonder if all specific questions (healthcare, student aid etc) should not be seen from the perspective of a spectrum whereby, for some questions, one needs to pull and, for others, one needs to push. It may help to get bipartisan 'deals' without individuals having a sense that they are losing their sense of identity. ... Undoubtedly there are social programs which are beneficial...It’s human nature (humans have a tendency to stretch and incentives matter). On this flip side of this it’s easy for government to utilize these institutions created to provide a base benefit to society, and stretch them beyond their means. A good example of this is the essay . “Not Yours to Give.” Which highlights Davy Crocketts time in government. ... For healthcare, the patchwork will make it a challenge to reform. Change will eventually come, maybe out of eventual necessity. To link back to the company wages topic, perhaps a similar push-pull principle applies. Unless you can show me how top executives' talent has been multiplied since the 70s for instance, it's hard to explain the rising 'gap' between top execs in many companies, large and small, and the typical 'worker' in these companies. This gap is good and is a major contributor to the overall pie growth but it seems to me the share of the few has become too large in comparison to the share of many and this may have a detrimental effect on the growth of the pie. If i'd be a CEO right now, my aim would be to maximize my compensation but it would be appropriate to have safeguards to make sure that the Board knows what's not theirs to give. IMO, the present rules of the game (Boards and "say-on-pay" policies) are not 'working' giving rise to consideration for outside policies. If you like to learn from elsewhere, i like what the Germans have been trying to do in order to maximize the NPV at the group level: https://www.gibsondunn.com/stricter-rules-for-remuneration-of-management-board-members-in-german-stock-corporations-extended-liability-for-members-of-the-supervisory-board/ But like for many topics, before discussing solutions, 'we' first have to agree that there is a problem.

An even more basic question, how can anyone believe cases are actually declining in GA when the positivity rate is 12.7%? One of the key fundamental ratio to use for the pandemic has been the percent positive ratio. However, it does not fit with the narrative that more "cases' happened as result of more tests being done and less "cases" happened as a result of less tests being done. i try to stick to fundamentals and admit that it's difficult to predict based on technicals but it seems that technical considerations can lead to deviation from fundamentals.

When, as a 'group', it is decided that life insurance will be issued to 'members', the risks are pooled and the premiums (possibly adjusted for age for obvious reasons) are essentially uniform across the board. Sometimes, it is decided to account for some specific risk factors (ie smoking status, because it is so significant and 'easy' to document) but, otherwise, the risks are pooled and you end up with a premium (adjusting for administrative costs and maybe a profit margin but let's forget about this profit part for now or consider profit as the business definition or the potential social capital gain) that reflects the pooled risks. You end up with individuals that will exhibit various levels of risk behaviors, some of which may be very far from your 'values' but you may adhere to the group life insurance program because of the net benefit it provides. What is a 'group'? Can it be a nation? By definition, pooling risks and other collective behaviors will have a tendency to impact personal preferences and 'rights'. What is it that prevents to aim for the best NPV, taking all relevant inputs (private or public)? Benjamin Franklin was not exactly a leftist but, when seeing the impact of fires in Philadelphia, decided to put in place several community features for the 'common good': community-sponsored fire brigade, an insurance company, prevention measures (the Franklin stove etc). These features had a 'government' component but included good governance aspects which apply to any endeavors, public or private, in order to maximize outcome and minimize consequences. When referring to the "directional linear path", instead of a war-type mentality, i wonder if all specific questions (healthcare, student aid etc) should not be seen from the perspective of a spectrum whereby, for some questions, one needs to pull and, for others, one needs to push. It may help to get bipartisan 'deals' without individuals having a sense that they are losing their sense of identity. i think you like quotes and i wonder what Benjamin Franklin would say and do in today's environment but when he said: "whereby every man might help another, without any disservice to him", i think he was referring to the net positive NPV concept described above.

If herd immunity is there in Georgia, -Why is the percent positive rate at 12.7% as of yesterday? -Why do the current hospitalizations and new death rates (even if directionally favorable) suggest that there is more fresh human flesh to burn? https://covidtracking.com/data/state/georgia If Georgia and others are ideologically on the 'right' side, -What explains the patterns of mobility reports? https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-08-25_US_Georgia_Mobility_Report_en.pdf

This is, by definition, work in progress and blanket 'solutions' cannot be applied across the board but i've come to believe that hybrid public-private healthcare solutions are the way to go. There are significant disadvantages related to public coverage but the coverage at least provides some kind of mitigating effect against the somewhat clear association that exists between low incomes and poor health outcomes. i've often wondered about the outcome related to the "more than 'basic service' option" available, to different degrees, in various areas. Overall, at the individual level, the more-than-basic option can, at times, offer positive value but IMO, from both an individual and population perspective, the more-than-basic option's expected net value is negative (even considering the cash cost as a sunk cost). This should be an input when thinking about the tapeworm cost argument and the growing size of health expenditures versus GDP. We are presently watching a TV series and there's a gentleman in New Mexico who needs rehab services. The family is outraged by the basic formula that the insurance carrier is providing and are going all-in with their savings and more for the Cadillac option. i thought this was very puzzling. The problem can sometimes be reduced to the tension that exists between individualism and social capital. More of one invariably means less for the other. In Putnam's Bowling Alone which was edited during another bubble, the author was wrong about the endurance of bowling but he had a point about the importance of moral and intellectual associations and the risk of growing technology-related mass media.

Looking forward to wabuffo's explanations but here's (hopefully) a complementary perspective. Not subtracting anything to the investment column is highly unusual and is related to the unusual nature of BRK. Look at pages 6 and 7 of the 2010 annual report for a short overview. The concept of investments per share Mr. Buffett refers to involves total investments financed by both the float and relevant retained earnings. Most insurers have a "safe" portfolio accounting for most float and retained earnings. A lot of these portfolios contain various embedded risks including reaching for yield but that's another story. Mr. Buffett suggests that the precise number computed is an "element" of intrinsic value. When valuing an insurer, one has to discount this number to various degrees and the market has done so for almost all insurers. The hybrid nature of BRK with a large and diversified source of consistent earnings allows it to invest its relevant retained earnings portion into equities. The discount to the first column investment number (which is related to the goodwill of an insurance operation) is related to three going forward assumptions: 1-the consistency of underwriting operations with zero or negative cost of float overall, 2-the long term growth rate of float and 3-the return on invested float (both acquired and reinvested float). Historically, those three assumptions for BRK meant no discounting of the first-column number element. What about now? It seems to me this is a conceptual way to integrate different takes on the outlook and present valuation. The third assumption is presently challenged by the fact that the "safe" part of the float portfolio is earning essentially zero. i would submit that it may be reasonable to discount the first-column number element because the growth of float is likely to be less than before and one has to make a judgement call as to the relevance and optionality of the "safe" part of the portfolio at this point. So, i'd say a slight discount is now warranted but the discount appears to be less than the one reported by wabuffo's model. ----- For the insurance wind coverage aspect in Florida and the Gulf Coast, it appears that BRK drastically reduced exposure in the last few years and increased rates this year with the early phase of hardening of the market but it seems that public pools decided mostly to self-reinsure and retain wind risk..