Castanza

Does anyone know who's the asshole who voted against it?? Senator Rand Paul WOW! If I had to guess I would have said Ted Cruz... not the doctor. You should read his reasoning first. When he voted there were already enough to pass the funding. He voted no to make a statement that the funding could have easily been pulled from elsewhere instead of borrowing more. If the vote was going to depend on his vote he would have voted yes. It was a no because he had the luxury. That being said, it’s a bad time to die in that hill under these circumstances.

That's called reading into what people have said. Nobody is saying to lack empathy or not move forward with testing, quarantine, etc. It's sad that individuals have died from this. Nobody wants that especially in their own social circle. One of Greg's points earlier in this thread was correct when stating how a lot of people are using this situation as an outlet for political frustration. It's not unwarranted, but there is no benefit to that in the near term. Panicking solves fewer issues than having cynicism in a situation. Doctors and healthcare providers are the most cynical people I've ever met but at the same time are extremely compassionate. My wife works with babies that are the size of baseballs who have little chance of surviving. The situations are terrible and I wouldn't be able to handle it. But she has a job to do and for the most part being an effective healthcare provider means putting emotions on the back burner (most of the time). At the end of the day If you're that worried about it then do what brings you peace of mind and go out as little as possible. Take precautions for your loved ones etc. Is Buffett panicking? That mofo is in the high risk category and he's out hunting! ;D

Added to $JETS in IRA

Moving to safe havens like $SPCE.....jk.....added a SAVE atm LEAP and some shares

I'm sorry, you work in healthcare? As in caring of people who are ill, with the goal of them getting better? There are goals and there are realities. The reality is if your old and/or immuno compromised your more likely to die if you get the corona virus. Without a cure what exactly would you like a healthcare worker to do in that situation? I know that the internet does not convey tone well, so please believe me when I say that I mean this in the most sincere, non-offense way - I think you should find another line of work outside of the healthcare industry. If your default response whenever someone is ill with an unknown illness or an illness in which there is no cure is to suggest that there's nothing to do, then perhaps trying to help those in need of help is your calling. I agree regarding tone via the internet but thats beside the point. That being said I would have you take a hard look at what the current healthcare system has to offer those with flu who become compromised secondary to super infection or "collateral damage" either metabolic, organ etc. If you were aware you might become very alarmed by friend. Many of those who die due to the flu are not able to helped, nothing can be done. They have irreversible organ/lung damage, do not physically have the immune response needed to fight the virus or would only survive in a vegetative state. My initial assumption is your aware there is no cure for covid19 or the the flu, correct? Again, since there is no cure, outside of supportive measures what exactly would you like a healthcare provider to do? I think this is a good segway into why many on social media, the TV, radio, etc are alarmed by the muted response by health care officials, gov, CDC, etc. Outside of universal precautions and quarantining people THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO!!!!!!!! As cherzeca said above. Where is all the outrage regarding the flu? We deal with that every year and 600-800k people die a year!!! Where is the outrage? The compassion? The love???? Not to mention a vaccine would only be what 50% effective for HEALTHY individuals. People don't get it as I said earlier. Rapid compounding spread is inevitable.

I work in healthcare. The only advances that we have come up with in that time that are effective against this are 1) hand washing, 2) contact isolation, 3) mechanical ventilation (but by this point it is already way too late). Also, we severely lack # of ICU beds and resources which will become apparent soon. It is already apparent we lack resources if you look at how testing for this has rolled out. Lack of testing (thus giving visibility) and means of spread prevention are two different things in my opinion. They work together on some level for sure. But for something as infectious as this, if you miss a single person who is infected anywhere it is already too late. In fact the incubation period alone (14 days) is enough to come to the conclusion that stopping spread is pretty much impossible. Even if the US and other countries started preparing for COVID-19 the minute the heard about it, the time frame for vaccine development would still likely be 1 year. If test kits were developed in masses on the first day it still would be too late because individuals are walking around for potentially 14 days with no symptoms. Eventually would most likely show "mild" symptoms that they probably wouldn't seek testing for to begin with. This is wrong though. Basic epidemiology and how R nought works. Each person you contain prevents about 2-3 other infections. You can only contain what you can see. If you're not showing symptoms, you're not getting tested. It's compounding regardless and as you said above there are no hospitals with enough beds. I guess the question is, would testing with quarantine of individuals who test positive slow the compound rate enough to reduce the impact on hospitals? Probably not. And I'm not saying they shouldn't test. I'm just saying everyone's focus on it seems bit overcooked. For example: my wife works in the most advanced level 4 NICU east of the Mississippi. They have a whopping total of 62 beds... Are you trained in epidemiology? This stuff is not rocket science and it is certainly not new. Your argument is like saying “so what if i lose 99% of my portfolio, the remaining 1% will continue to compound and I will be rich someday”. SARS R0 varied a lot during the epidemic. It ranged from 2-15 and hen fell all the way back down to 3. I think we agree more than what you think. There is no vaccine so R0 isn't all that helpful. Testing is helpful to a degree but absent a vaccine impact is minimal. Locking down high risk individuals and limiting their exposure is probably the best. So far 81% of cases have been "mild". "The model we’ve used for our R_0 estimate is phenomenological, which means that it doesn’t aim to *explain* what’s happening on the ground but rather to *describe* it. This is a good option in information-scarce situations, like at the start of a novel viral outbreak (AKA now)." — Dr. Maia Majumder (@maiamajumder) January 24, 2020 How much does R0 matter? R0 is a useful number to understand when it comes to things like determining vaccine targets (the higher the R0, the more people you have to vaccinate to stop the disease from spreading). But the work of containing an outbreak can begin even before we have R0 nailed down. The R0 depends on a few things, including how long a person is contagious, how many susceptible people they tend to interact with, and how transmissible the infectious agent is. That means we can make an epidemic less likely to spread by attacking those particular factors. We can make fewer people susceptible to the virus; that’s what a vaccine does. (There’s no vaccine for the coronavirus yet, but perhaps there will be someday.) You can reduce the amount of time you’re able to spread the virus by staying home if you’re sick. And you can reduce transmissibility through measures like hand washing. These are all good actions to take no matter what the R0 turns out to be, and they’re good advice even for ordinary colds and flu.

I work in healthcare. The only advances that we have come up with in that time that are effective against this are 1) hand washing, 2) contact isolation, 3) mechanical ventilation (but by this point it is already way too late). Also, we severely lack # of ICU beds and resources which will become apparent soon. It is already apparent we lack resources if you look at how testing for this has rolled out. Lack of testing (thus giving visibility) and means of spread prevention are two different things in my opinion. They work together on some level for sure. But for something as infectious as this, if you miss a single person who is infected anywhere it is already too late. In fact the incubation period alone (14 days) is enough to come to the conclusion that stopping spread is pretty much impossible. Even if the US and other countries started preparing for COVID-19 the minute the heard about it, the time frame for vaccine development would still likely be 1 year. If test kits were developed in masses on the first day it still would be too late because individuals are walking around for potentially 14 days with no symptoms. Eventually would most likely show "mild" symptoms that they probably wouldn't seek testing for to begin with. This is wrong though. Basic epidemiology and how R nought works. Each person you contain prevents about 2-3 other infections. You can only contain what you can see. If you're not showing symptoms, you're not getting tested. It's compounding regardless and as you said above there are no hospitals with enough beds. I guess the question is, would testing with quarantine of individuals who test positive slow the compound rate enough to reduce the impact on hospitals? Probably not. And I'm not saying they shouldn't test. I'm just saying everyone's focus on it seems bit overcooked. For example: my wife works in the most advanced level 4 NICU east of the Mississippi. They have a whopping total of 62 beds...

I work in healthcare. The only advances that we have come up with in that time that are effective against this are 1) hand washing, 2) contact isolation, 3) mechanical ventilation (but by this point it is already way too late). Also, we severely lack # of ICU beds and resources which will become apparent soon. It is already apparent we lack resources if you look at how testing for this has rolled out. Lack of testing (thus giving visibility) and means of spread prevention are two different things in my opinion. They work together on some level for sure. But for something as infectious as this, if you miss a single person who is infected anywhere it is already too late. In fact the incubation period alone (14 days) is enough to come to the conclusion that stopping spread is pretty much impossible. Even if the US and other countries started preparing for COVID-19 the minute the heard about it, the time frame for vaccine development would still likely be 1 year. If test kits were developed in masses on the first day it still would be too late because individuals are walking around for potentially 14 days with no symptoms. Eventually would most likely show "mild" symptoms that they probably wouldn't seek testing for to begin with. People are putting way too much emphasis on testing (as if testing is going to stop it). My wife (a healthcare professional) agrees. The best thing is to take spread prevention precautions such as limiting contact with others, washing you hands, drinking lots of water, and staying away from high risk individuals who already have acute or chronic illnesses. Anyone who is at high risk of dying from COVID-19 is going to be treated the say exact way they are treated for the flu. If you have a 80 year old grandmother who spent her life smoking and she developed a severe cough what would you do? You would take them to the doctor and they would be treated with standard protocol. But you would do this both before and after COVID-19 existed. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/256521#covid-19 Shutting down schools, daycare and any type of senior care facilities is probably the best course of action.

Lmao that’s pretty good! ;D

Added to GRBK at 10.50

LOL that's almost worth the risk...imagine getting a whole cruise ship to yourself

I believe the CDC said 2500 kits will be available this week which is 1.5m tests. Not sure about official results though.

Robinhood App was down all day yesterday and just had another outage today that could cause another missed day of trading. I hope this is the actual reason.

COVID-19 is likely going to be a seasonal virus like influenza. Wash your hands, avoid crowded areas, drink lots of water, eat your fruit and veggies. A vaccine is what, 1-2 years out? And likely will only be 50% effective for healthy individuals. It sucks for sure, and will have a definitive impact on the elderly and those suffering with other illnesses. That's where we should be focusing out attention. Cut off all contact to elderly and chronically ill. This whole things can be summed up with a meme... I will happily eat crow if I'm wrong and the world governments find a way to contain and eradicate COVID-19 from the planet.

Atrocious. I'm not sure that I quite understand the fixation on having "correct" and up to date statistics. What would governments in the US do differently if they had "good" statistics resulting from more prevalent testing? So, suppose that there was more testing being done of people who sought medical attention for respiratory disorders and it came back that there were 1,000 positive Covid-19 cases. If that were true, how many cases would there be that had not sought medical attention because the symptoms were not so severe? Perhaps it would be 1,000 more that wouldn't show up in the official statistics? And then what would the US government do with those numbers? Look, either this virus can be controlled and we can put the genie back in the bottle, or it cannot be controlled and the genie is on the loose. If you are in the camp that this thing has already spread so much that the world has lost control of it, then "good" statistics don't strike me as too useful. If you are not going to impose mandatory quarantines and if you are not going to suspend international travel, what are the remaining levers that governments can pull and how are better statistics actually useful? I guess that I'm in the camp that the genie is out of the bottle and that it's time to focus on managing a situation which is no longer preventable. But, maybe I'm alone in that camp? SJ It makes a huge difference. Investors are supposed to understand exponential growth, right? This means that time matters a lot and early interventions in the right places, in the right ways, giving correct info to population so they can act in the right way, etc, can have a tremendous impact on the rate at which things unfold. Since healthcare system capability isn't built for huge peaks, these delays can help it absorb increases much better and will result in saved lives. Also, vaccines and other drugs are being tested and developed, and delays help get more people across that line. In short, bungling the public health response will cost lives, could be your grand-parents or some friend who has a weaker immune system because they survived cancer or have asthma or whatever. Ironically doesn’t seem like too many people understand significance of exponential growth on a value investing site. So the greatest country on earth with the *greatest healthcare system* had a huge headstart on tackling this and bungled it up, far worse management than Canada or Europe and people on here asking “so what”. Lol. The only good thing this admin did was cutting off travel with China early which helped us have a delay in cases. Everything else was botched. What is "everything else"? Testing? That's not doing anything but delaying the exponential growth by maybe a month or two. If you have 1 individual who test positive and you quarantine 100 individuals believed to have come in contact with that person. You still have another 1000 (probably more) individuals who may have been exposed by the 100 during the 14 day incubation period. It's futile...If you miss a single infected individual it's already too late. The ONLY thing testing is good for at this point is alerting individuals that COVID-19 is in their immediate area. And by then you're likely 14 days too late... By your standards the best thing that could have possibly been done was on day 1 of COVID-19 being discovered is go into full nationwide quarantine. And that would likely be ineffective as well due to the long incubation period.

@Dalal Which country should we be looking at on how to handle this issue? Finland who has the lowest flu death rate of any country has 6 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 130 people recently in quarantine who were in contact with the original 6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_outbreak_in_Finland List of every country with COVID-19 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/locations-confirmed-cases.html Fact is there is nothing any country can do. This is the flu on steroids and no modern country has been able to eradicated influenza. Even Finland suffered a flu epidemic in 2018. The fact is, this thing is going to run its course globally and there isn't a damn thing any government or healthcare system will be able to do about it.

Can anyone speak to the differences of how information is being spread now vs when SARS occurred? Social media certainly has changed the efficiency, amount, and lifecycle if news. But our (societies) appetite and demand for instant information has also changed and could be skewing (how much is or isn’t being withheld) this to an extent. Clearly information is being withheld, but how do we know info wasn’t being withheld in the past and it simply wasn’t made known that govt was doing this in the past? There is clearly pros and cons to both sides of the argument. As Greg said it’s a fine line to walk.

Michter's US*1 Kentucky Straight Rye Picked up a bottle this weekend. Worth a try if you like Rye.

By far the most level headed logical approach to this situation. Castanza, "Level headed" ? - Please look at the "/6" and read it again. Basically all countermeasures to contain this thing are now enabled. It's BS. Level headed as in not inducing panic. The facts we have are the facts we have. Speculation to the extreme doesn’t solve anything. I’m not saying this guy is 100% correct in his analysis. One thing I have learned in financial markets is that you want to panic before everyone else does. ??? Lol fair enough. But I would say being prepared is different than panicking.

By far the most level headed logical approach to this situation. Castanza, "Level headed" ? - Please look at the "/6" and read it again. Basically all countermeasures to contain this thing are now enabled. It's BS. Level headed as in not inducing panic. The facts we have are the facts we have. Speculation to the extreme doesn’t solve anything. I’m not saying this guy is 100% correct in his analysis.

By far the most level headed logical approach to this situation.

Dalal.Holdings, My point is merely, that every health care system in situations like this will eventually fail, if it's not saturated [by setup & design] by personal integrity, professionalism [professional independence [ <- ? ]] & intellectual honesty. I agree I doubt there are any healthcare systems designed to handle pandemic type events. I’d imagine if you go to Canada and US hospitals you will see layouts and bed capacities designed for average capacity. There are zero hospitals out there with 6k empty beds... Also, what country was prepared for this? You can certainly make the argument that the CDC should have had more funding etc. But the fact is countries are dealing with the unknown. Even if we look at flu vaccines, they are predominantly synthesized from the previous strain. That’s partly why they are only 50% effective for healthy individuals (according to the CDC). A covid-19 vaccine is unlikely to produce better results. Many experts have already said that this is impossible to contain on a GLOBAL scale. So to Dala’s point I think it’s ignorant to blame any individual healthcare system. On the US system I think the biggest issue is from HMB 1973 when insurance was tied to employers and only employers could claim tax deductions for costs. Add in the lawsuit aspects and your looking at massive cost inflation. Over testing as a result of lawsuit threats is an issue as well. My wife just gave me an example of a a baby she has been working with. It is being kept alive purely by machines. The vowels are completely dead and it has many other developmental issues. It’s been hospitalized for almost 200 days and probably won’t make it much longer. The parents are almost completely absent yet request the best treatment. The baby happens to be blind as well. So the hospital, wanting to avoid lawsuits had to provide corrective surgery to attempt to reverse the blindness. It was probably extremely expensive but if they didn’t, the parents would likely be able to sue on the grounds that they didn’t provide care to the furthest extent. Healthcare in the US is riddled with this kind of stuff. Anyways that’s far enough off topic.

What exactly is the draw to this particular nursing school (both from an investment and education perspective). What do they do that is so special? Nursing schools seem to be a dime a dozen. There are multiple schools in almost every metropolitan area. If you go to the local hospitals you will find the nursing staff is often highly comprised of local graduates who have done their precept there.

That’s a pretty interesting perspective. http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate “Less deadly than SARS but more transmissible.” “Most cases are mild” For the most part, the only individuals dying from this are ones who are already critically ill or have some type of a respiratory or possibly cardiovascular issues.

I don’t get why people like Lagavulin. I had one bottle. My friend said it tastes like old socks. Lol You either enjoy the grass or it tastes like ass. I’m sure the premium you pay adds to the flavor profile :P