Convexity

You suspect 100k+ to be infected. Let's say around 1000 died (10x the official amount to be really skeptical) which would mean that the death rate is still only about 1%. How do you calculate mortality rate when you don't know how many of the currently infected will eventually die (after say 2 weeks)? Isn't the only way to do that accurately to have a controlled population of confirmed, infected patients and then measure how many are dead after 2-3 weeks? I think the only way to get accuracy on that during the outbreak is to have a large group of infected individuals that you monitor. And right now it looks like pandemonium in any city that has a large group of infected cases (so it's hard to measure). That's what the Lancet study did for 41 patients in Wuhan and found that 6 out of 41 died (see under Discussion). Also virus continues to mutate over time and can become easier (or harder) to spread. Early version of "1918 spanish flu" were less fatal in Scandinavia in 1917. More fatal version of the same virus evolved in following year. My point earlier in the thread is that getting a handle on the denominator of the case fatality rate will probably be nearly impossible. The only "cases" that public health authorities know about are the cases where people seek medical attention. But, how many 25 and 30 year-old people became sick, but were not so sick that they chose to go to the doctor or to the emergency ward? The confirmed cases are likely those who are more susceptible to the virus, either due to age or to being otherwise immuno-compromised. The apparent case fatality rate is alarmingly high, but it's entirely possible that the denominator could be off by a factor of 4 or 5 because of people who never sought medical help, which would bring the case fatality rate back down to earth. The other thing that might or might not happen is that the r-naught could come down as public health authorities communicate avoidance strategies to the population and infected people begin to better self-isolate. But, that's just a faint hope at this point. SJ Using this source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.27.922443v1.full.pdf The cases are ~27k. The biggest unknown are the lag times/incubation periods. Are the deaths happening from pre-symptomatic infections from 1 day ago? 10 days? 30? I also haven't seen much stating that anyone who isn't susceptible to flu death (elderly, etc) has died. Anyone know if this has been happening?

Incorrect, death rate in Wuhan is around 10%, in Hubei Province is around 5% so far.... You're right that I'm wrong. 80/2744 is ~3% Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak

Late to the party here. My $0.02: Using the Wikipedia timeline for past couple of weeks: - Roughly 40% daily growth rate in confirmed cases - Roughly 60% growth in deaths - Roughly 60% growth in quarantines Deaths outpacing confirmed cases. But death rate is 0.02%, which is about the same as "standard" seasonal flu. SARS was 10% death rate with thousands of cases Avian flu was 50% death rate in humans with dozens of cases Swine flu 0.02% in humans as well Novel Coronavirus deaths also have only affected those groups typically susceptible to flu deaths. Data therefore says the thing to worry about is time from infection to death. If person to person transmission outside of the quarantined areas in China happens, and the virus mutates and beings more harmful, then there's more concern.

I am a casual observer of worldwide water trends, principally through circleofblue.org (I highly) recommend this web site). General thoughts: - Upstream claims on water resources can decimate downstream claims (e.g. the ongoing fight on the Colorado River, which hydrates a huge portion of the American West) - As mean sea surface temperatures continue to rise very gradually, stronger storms and higher full moon/storm surge tides occur - A very large amount of water supply is controlled by municipalities (in the U.S.) with few for-profit opportunities - Desalinization (desal) is a natural evolution of our water supply, but the cost is very high for now - I do not see water rates skyrocketing as water is fundamental to human life. I see this akin to the government subsidies and programs aimed at a stable U.S. food supply. Re: investments, it is very likely that some of the best opportunities around water are tucked away (particularly desal) in industrial conglomerates or other entities. For instance, Poseidon Water (U.S. desal leader) is owned by a Brookfield entity. Lockheed Martin is also pursuing new desal technologies. For those managing these segments there is no doubt a big compensation upside, but not at a meaningful enough scale to sway overall results at the parent entities.

She references Kahneman a little. It is absolutely approachable and there isn't much science to the text itself. It is not a "dense" read, so you can think about the concepts she introduces during the plethora of anecdotes subsequently put forth. One detracting item is that the book felt repetitive to me (but I am no expert in cognitive psychology and maybe I just missed the difference between some concepts).

Please provide evidence to support your claim that volatility has been "increasing over the past few years" I took daily prices since 2010 and calculated an annual coefficient of variation. That figure has trended up the past few years.

Interesting way to look at this; thanks for sharing. I have always seen BTC as either a store of value or a medium of exchange. Seems the exchange part of it doesn't work as it isn't accepted most places (and I think transaction volumes haven't been growing anything close to price). This then makes value store prominent (as a gold alternative), which cannot be a stable thing with price volatility. Since volatility has been increasing the past few years in BTC, the value store argument also goes by the way side (at least for now). So are we to believe that the die-hard never sell BTC crowd are long-term horizoned investors? Or are they get rich quick people who refuse to let go?