minten

you think taking the moral high road here (which, one might argue, is a bit harsh on someone with a temp job on minimum wages that now got sacked) is more important than saving the economy? maybe i'm being too pragmatic, but if it's ultimately cheaper to give a one-time hand-out so everything around us doesn't crash and burn, then i'll gladly drop my principles and i'm all for it.

actually, not a bad idea. is there any talk of something like this realistically being implemented right now in the US?

Yesterday someone posted here it's criminal to underestimate this issue. I'd argue at this stage it's equally criminal to overestimate it. My twitter feed is completely filled with doomsday-message after doomsday-message. "This is the worst adversary the world has ever faced", "the Dow is going 90% down", etc etc, goes on and on and on. And retweeted, and retweeted. Made-up doctors tweet from made-up ER's, retweeted 1000's of times, it's hard to keep track of it. Fact: in Italy, everybody's nightmare, 0.04% of the population has contracted this virus. 1800 deaths. Did you know malaria kills 3000 CHILDREN (!) a day, and nobody gives a fuck? Least of all, the economy? Fear is out of proportion. This isn't at a stage yet where it's a serious threat to the world population, and it's now clear it will never reach that stage. You still have a bigger chance of getting hit by a bus while walking back with groceries from your cleaned out supermarket then actually dying from corona (well, maybe not, with public transportation severely limited in many places, but you get my point). This could have only eventually become a threat on a scale that it's big enough for people to justifyably get worried when it keeps compounding and compounding. By now, based on what we've seen in Asia even in countries where measures were not really that strict in the first place, it's pretty clear it won't, every country on earth has taken measures in the last week or so. For this to ever become a serious threat it would need to double and then double and then double and then double and then double some more. Italy's numbers will start coming down end of the week or in the weekend, there's no way they won't. I hope the scaremongering will stop at that point. But it's amazing to me how the human mind is so unable to properly evaluate risk and threats, and is unable to process small numbers in relation to large numbers. Can't we just say to eachother: yes, this is something we need to take seriously. yes, it's best not to eat out for a few weeks and work at home whenever possible. no, this is not something we need to panic or scaremonger over?

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 :-\ These statistics are always for a 24 hour period when reported, so yes, the "day" is in fact over. I argued numbers aren't growing exponentially, they clearly aren't, don't know else what to say. Nevertheless, a lot of death unfortunately. It should get better in a few days (or a week) when the lockdown finally kicks in. Some say there's a 10 day lag to new cases, others a 14 day lag, we will see I guess, we're at 6 days now.

Which to a more or less extent is what every Chinese city did, what Hong Kong did, what Taiwan did, what Japan did, what South Korea did, what Singapore did, all had or are having great success. It's also what Italy did (a week ago), what almost every European country did or is doing (last few days to today), and what surely the US will do early next week. A couple of weeks of not eating out, a sharp short recession and a sharp bounce of demand after that, better treatment options to be available in the fall, and we should all be good to go.

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?

Found it.. The village where it all started in Italy (and which has been in lockdown by far the longest) has been infection free for the last two days. In the Piedmont region the contagion curve is decreasing, seems like past actions taken are proving to be effective not only in Asia, but in Italy as well, as long as you account for the delay between measures being taken and actual cases going down.. Considering the fact Italy's new cases and number of deaths (despite terrible on a micro-level, don't get me wrong) have not been growing exponentially at all (like in many of the doomsday models) even before the lockdown kicks in in the stats, it sounds like we're a number of days, maybe a week away, from the lockdown of the entire country having its effect and new cases should decrease.

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.

I might argue the rest of the world is in a similar early stage and is now also taking those costs. In almost every country the fear of this virus is based on how big it might get, not how big it is now. The TOTAL number of corona deaths in the whole world including china is about the number of deaths in an average flu season in my country (a middle sized European country). You read horrific anecdotes on twitter etc, but going by the cold numbers it's still really, really small. Hospitals are getting overwhelmed here and there, as they also tend to get overwhelmed in bad flu years (but without the media coverage and the heartwrenching flu anectdotes, as they don't get a zillion likes so never end up in your timeline). This isn't the flu because it has a potential to grow much bigger in a population with less resistance to it, not because it's bigger than the flu * right now *. Yet, almost every country is taking serious action now. With a virus that (like the flu) really isn't that contagious in the first place, I'm actually kind of hopeful the numbers will start to drop in 10-12 days when measures start having effect and it turns out we can all copy the China-model (if their numbers are actually accurate of course). But maybe I'm just being overly optimistic.

not just severity is a question, but also the length. i mean, china will have taken a large hit, but considering they seem to be coming back on track (and assuming the virus won't just hit them again) the effects seem rather limited. obviously, if things take longer to play out over here, the damage gets increasingly worse. anyway, might be contradictory, but i really believe locking things down now (as appears to be happening) will save a lot of damage to the economy in the long run.

as I understand it, there should be a treatment with antibodies available within a number of months (so not now, but probably in time for the fall-season). so not yet a vaccine, but a way to treat people with antibodies who already got it. not sure why development time for this would be faster, perhaps less safety regulations?

I trust China's numbers to some extent, but it's not clear to me how draconian their Hubei lockdown really was, and if that's even doable here. What Italy has been doing has been much more transparent for us in the West, they're ahead of everybody else in both number of infections and their containment response, and their measures are being copied to some extent in every European country (and soon the US), so their statistiscs are a great forward looking indicator. If their "new cases" stop going up (and they seem to have stopped going up over the last three days, altough it's too soon to be sure), or at the very least stop going up exponentially like was predicted in many doomsday scenario's, that's good news. I was just looking for some confirmation of a region which is even further ahead than Italy as a whole.

Does anybody have any data on spread on a regional level in Italy by any chance? Italy placed certain parts of Lombardy on lockdown from February 22nd. If those measures were effective, the statistics should show it. It's the ultimate test case, as all other serious containment measures in Italy and the rest of Europe were only taken five days ago at the earliest, so won't show in the new case statistics for five/seven days. If the lockdown was succesful here, it seems more likely it will be succesful elsewhere.

A small addition: i've encountered this situation as well: different stock, different tender though. I'm not US, and not from a country that generally has restrictions, so it's not nationality based, but rather IB based. They refuse to do Corporate Actions for French firms on the secondary tier of Euronext (whatever that is, I haven't looked into it) because of some sort of regulation. I also couldn't tender. The end game was the same: when the offer had long closed and a delisting was in the works, a gigantic bid appeared equal to the tender price and you could sell on-market. Still, it's something worth considering when playing arb games on illiquid French stocks while with IB (and potentially others).