Liberty

Bill is a friend of mine. But thanks for making it clear who's the real one here. So what if he's your friend? Does that preclude him from being a deuche? Does that make me one for saying so? The reason I had doubts about whether the story was real was his casual attitude about it. His twitter was like I'm loving this guy who promotes risky and irresponsible trades. Ok, Public Service Announcement, kids, the markets are bananas right now. Here's the story about my wife's cousin who killed himself because he lost a lot of money doing risky and irresponsible trades. So be careful out there and stay safe. OK, PSA over. Man, I'm loving this guy that does risky and irresponsible trades. But he's you'r friend. So.... Dude, the kid didn't even lose the money, Robinhood interface showed -730k USD that he didn't owe (as far as we can tell), and he panicked and made a really bad decision, as humans sometimes do during panic. And if you think he has a casual attitude about it.. Man, thanks for providing more proof you're the real one here. A real gem you are. Thank you for your contribution to this thread about a 20 year old's suicide.

Bill is a friend of mine. But thanks for making it clear who's the real one here.

I know. The question he typed as his suicide note should have been an email to Robinhood customer support. Did no one ever tell him that if you don't understand something, ask? The thing is, when you don't understand something, you don't always know you don't understand it. He thought it was quite clear, and that he was almost a million in the red, and the way the interface is built, with no other indications, it's pretty easy to make that mistake. If he had time to think clearly, he probably would've figured it out, but that's what's dangerous about panic, you can do things that you can't undo..

Thanks for sharing. Yes, I think that's a good approach, something to think about with my boys when they're a bit older. I think these situations are probably even worse with really good people who care and are trying really hard to do good, because they put immense pressure on themselves, on top of whatever external pressure may be present (real or imagined).

Good new podcast interview with John Collison, the co-founder of Stripe: http://investorfieldguide.com/collison/

So tragic. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-commits-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/#5554895f5928 Here's Bill Brewster telling the story about his cousin:

As I saw posted recently, the Confederacy lasted for 5 years. It's not a country like Ireland with a long tradition and symbolism and culture, it's a very specific cause that means a few very specific things. I've had t-shirts that are older than the Confederacy. It's not "your heritage", it's about breaking up the United States and defending slavery, and they lost the war, after many americans died, which isn't usually exactly something to celebrate, unless the whole point of those showing their symbols is to say that they wish they had won and broken up the US and kept slavery. Pretending otherwise is like pretending that the Third Reich was about national pride and try to sweep under the rug the racism and aggression and genocide. I'm sure a bunch of people never thought about those things while showing the symbols, but that doesn't make it otherwise, just like my parents have used some racist and anti-semitic expressions that they didn't realize were so (or didn't think were big deals) because they were just repeating stuff they had heard as kids and never thought about it much... If it was a southern thing, why don’t all the blacks and latinos down south feel like it’s their heritage, and it’s 99.99% whites?

https://thehill.com/homenews/coronavirus-report/503049-fauci-says-he-hasnt-talked-with-trump-in-two-weeks

Texas: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Texas-set-a-new-record-for-COVID-19-15337187.php

"FDA revokes emergency use ruling for hydroxychloroquine" https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/15/fda-revokes-hydroxychloroquine/

A surgeon on masks: https://www.howardluksmd.com/sports-medicine/wear-a-mask-save-a-life-today-maybe-your-own-maybe-someone-elses/

Taleb on masks: https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7

Yeah, it's not about the nominal number of cases. Italy has 60m people, so talks of herd immunity after 35k deaths doesn't make sense. A country known for chaos and bad management has been able to totally crush its curve while the US has one of the worst curves in the world (which isn't surprising when you look at how bungled almost everything has been from leadership). 4.3% of world population with over 27% of deaths so far. The data coming out of the hardest hit places have been quite positive IMO: case counts, hospitalizations and positive test rates have been dropping steepest in the places that have seen the worst outbreaks yet serology testing in those places suggests 20-30% infection rates in those populations. This suggests that we might not need anywhere near the arbitrary but oft-cited 70% infection rate level to see sharp declines in the virus's prevalence. Has the very high false-positive rates in serum tests been addressed? I don't put much weight on those. Trying to spin things to say that the US hasn't made things much worse than they had to be isn't realistic. Weeks and weeks were wasted, opportunities to push masks were wasted, the federal government mostly hindered states and did little at crucial times, everything was politicized and made confusing to citizens, etc. Not it hasn't which is why serology tests for those with limited outbreaks (i.e. the Santa Clara study) or for individuals aren't useful. Serology tests in places with far more widespread outbreaks provide a much better gauge of the population's exposure level and it may well even understate the level of exposure at the time the tests were taken given the weeks it takes for antibodies to appear + sampling bias that favors a less susceptible population (i.e. healthy people going into grocery stores). Either way, it's the hardest hit places that are seeing their numbers decline fastest. Not trying to put a spin on anything just providing data points that show that the transmissibility of the virus may be far less potent than what many originally thought. I agree the virus is probably less dangerous than initially thought, though still pretty bad (115k deaths in the US after a few months, far from the end of the crisis), but you don't gamble on that during the initial confusion and panic, you take precautions and do the things that you know work, as they more than pay for themselves early on in an exponential process. If those had been taken well, we'd be in much better shape now, like SK/NZ/Taiwan/HK/etc, but that was bungled. I was looking at the high-level trends for whole countries (ie. Italy vs US, but you can look at lots of other countries that were hit hard but crushed their curve*). I agree serum can provide some info for specific highly-infected areas, but I wasn't looking at areas there so I'm not sure what it has to do with it. *

Yeah, it's not about the nominal number of cases. Italy has 60m people, so talks of herd immunity after 35k deaths doesn't make sense. A country known for chaos and bad management has been able to totally crush its curve while the US has one of the worst curves in the world (which isn't surprising when you look at how bungled almost everything has been from leadership). 4.3% of world population with over 27% of deaths so far. The data coming out of the hardest hit places have been quite positive IMO: case counts, hospitalizations and positive test rates have been dropping steepest in the places that have seen the worst outbreaks yet serology testing in those places suggests 20-30% infection rates in those populations. This suggests that we might not need anywhere near the arbitrary but oft-cited 70% infection rate level to see sharp declines in the virus's prevalence. Has the very high false-positive rates in serum tests been addressed? I don't put much weight on those. Trying to spin things to say that the US hasn't made things much worse than they had to be isn't realistic. Weeks and weeks were wasted, opportunities to push masks were wasted, the federal government mostly hindered states and did little at crucial times, everything was politicized and made confusing to citizens, etc. Not a good time to compare both when one country has almost no new cases for a while while the others a bunch more coming in, since it can take weeks for deaths after infection. Italy's median age of 46 (vs US at 39) and multi-generational homes certainly didn't help it there too, but that just shows how much worse the US would be if it also had those demographics and cultural traditions.

I thought it was interesting because Akre has been holding Berkshire for many decades, not because of the size of the position in his portfolio.

Yeah, it's not about the nominal number of cases. Italy has 60m people, so talks of herd immunity after 35k deaths doesn't make sense. A country known for chaos and bad management has been able to totally crush its curve while the US has one of the worst curves in the world (which isn't surprising when you look at how bungled almost everything has been from leadership). 4.3% of world population with over 27% of deaths so far.

Comparing new case counts in Italy to that of the US is disingenuous. For one, Italy is a far smaller country while the US is much more spread out. And two, the worst hit places in Italy likely already have a sufficient degree of immunity such that their numbers continue to fall even with limited mitigation. New York's numbers looks a lot like Italy's for instance - and this despite having widespread crowded protests daily for more than two weeks already. It's not what I'm doing.

People make it more complicated than it needs to be. We can see what works elsewhere. The way to keep the economic AND human suffering to a minimum is to keep R0 below 1 and as low as possible. The way to do this is first with the hammer (lockdown), which we've done in many places, and then have everybody wear masks, have hand washing stations everywhere in public spaces, try to have as much social distancing as possible in public spaces, have contact tracing, heck, recommend that everyone take vitamin D supplements. All this is basically free compared to letting things blow up again (well, much better than free.. huge positive value)... All no-brainers that have worked elsewhere. Anyone sane would be pushing hard on this. If even Italy can get things under control, anyone can...

Herd immunity: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-should-we-aim-for-herd-immunity-like-sweden-b1de3348e88b

When Italy is better run than the US...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-masks-study-idUSKBN23G37V

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-should-we-aim-for-herd-immunity-like-sweden-b1de3348e88b "Coronavirus: Should We Aim for Herd Immunity Like Sweden? And What Can Countries like the US or Netherlands Learn from It?" By Tomas Pueyo, from "The Hammer and the Dance" and other smart writings about COVID.

Good interview with the author here: https://hiddenforces.io/podcasts/thomas-rid-active-measures-disinformation-political-warfare/ Book here: https://www.amazon.ca/Active-Measures-History-Disinformation-Political/dp/1250787408/

NZ:

General Mattis: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/