we laid an egg in N America in terms of preparation, for damn sure NS, but that's history. Sending mass amts of PPE to China , hell, we had a shortage BEFORE the shit hit our continent ...fuck i was paying $39 / box for masks!! normal is $9/box. I guess it didnt dawn on Canadian Health Ministry officials that this virus can end up in Canada? .......testing kits, what r those?...geez..........tax paying dollars right down the fuckin tubes, no accountability either ........
I really don't have one, we'll see where we are at in 1-2 weeks. If the curve flattens then I think you can gradually get commerce up and running. But that sounds easier said than done for now.
Would be nice to atleast stop some of the bleeding.
Other than understanding the basics of how the virus spreads, how overwhelmed healthcare systems would be, I really haven't tried to project beyond that. Obviously for every bullish case there is a bearish one and vice versa.
Why this Nobel laureate predicts a quicker coronavirus recovery
Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted.
Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world.
While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don't support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.
"What we need is to control the panic," he said. In the grand scheme, "we're going to be fine."
Here's what Levitt noticed in China: On Jan. 31, the country had 46 new deaths due to the novel coronavirus, compared with 42 new deaths the day before.
Although the number of daily deaths had increased, the rate of that increase had begun to ease off. In his view, the fact that new cases were being identified at a slower rate was more telling than the number of new cases itself. It was an early sign that the trajectory of the outbreak had shifted.
Think of the outbreak as a car racing down an open highway, he said. Although the car is still gaining speed, it's not accelerating as rapidly as before.
“This suggests that the rate of increase in the number of deaths will slow down even more over the next week,” Levitt wrote in a report he sent to friends Feb. 1 that was widely shared on Chinese social media. And soon, he predicted, the number of deaths would be decreasing every day.
Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus' rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths.
This forecast turned out to be remarkably accurate: As of March 16, China had counted a total of 80,298 cases and 3,245 deaths — in a nation of nearly 1.4 billion people where roughly 10 million die every year. The number of newly diagnosed patients has dropped to around 25 a day, with no cases of community spread reported since Wednesday.
Now Levitt, who received the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing complex models of chemical systems, is seeing similar turning points in other nations, even those that did not instill the draconian isolation measures that China did.
He analyzed data from 78 countries that reported more than 50 newcases of COVID-19 every day and sees "signs of recovery" in many of them. He's not focusing on the total number ofcases in a country, but on the number of new cases identified every day — and, especially, on the change in that number from one day to the next.
"Numbers are still noisy, but there are clear signs of slowed growth."
In South Korea, for example, newly confirmed cases are being added to the country's total each day, but the daily tally has dropped in recent weeks, remaining below 200. That suggests the outbreak there may be winding down.
In Iran, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases per day remained relatively flat last week, going from 1,053 last Monday to 1,028 on Sunday. Although that's still a lot of new cases, Levitt said, the pattern suggests the outbreak there "is past the halfway mark."
Italy, on the other hand, looks like it's still on the upswing. In that country, the number of newly confirmed cases increased on most days this past week.
In places that have managed to recover from an initial outbreak, officials must still contend with the fact that the coronavirus may return. China is now fighting to stop new waves of infection coming in from places where the virus is spreading out of control. Other countries are bound to face the same problem.
Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, "a consistent decline means there's some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers," he said.
In other words, as long as the reasons for the inaccurate case counts remain the same, it's still useful to compare them from one day to the next.
The trajectory of deaths backs up his findings, he said, since it follows the same basic trends as the new confirmed cases. So do data from outbreaks in confined environments, such as the one on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Out of 3,711 people on board, 712 were infected, and eight died.
This unintended experiment in coronavirus spread will help researchers estimate the number of fatalities that would occur in a fully infected population, Levitt said. For instance, the Diamond Princess data allowed him to estimate that being exposed to the new coronavirus doubles a person's risk of dying in the next two months. Most people have an extremely low risk of death in a two-month period, so that risk remains extremely low even when doubled.
Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the analysis was thought-provoking, if nothing else.
"Time will tell if Levitt's predictions are correct," Reich said. "I do think that having a wide diversity of experts bringing their perspectives to the table will help decision-makers navigate the very tricky decisions they will be facing in the upcoming weeks and months."
Levitt said he's in sync with those calling for strong measures to fight the outbreak. The social-distancing mandates are critical — particularly the ban on large gatherings — because the virus is so new that the population has no immunity to it, and a vaccine is still many months away. "This is not the time to go out drinking with your buddies," he said.
Getting vaccinated against the flu is important, too, because a coronavirus outbreak that strikes in the middle of a flu epidemic is much more likely to overwhelm hospitals and increases the odds that the coronavirus goes undetected. This was probably a factor in Italy, a country with a strong anti-vaccine movement, he said.
But he also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported.
Levitt fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down.
The virus can grow exponentially only when it is undetected and no one is acting to control it, Levitt said. That's what happened in South Korea last month, when it ripped through a closed-off cult that refused to report the illness.
"People need to be considered heroes for announcing they have this virus," he said.
The goal needs to be better early detection — not just through testing but perhaps with body-temperature surveillance, which China is implementing — and immediate social isolation.
While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is, quite simply put, "not the end of the world."
"The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be," he said.
Dr. Loren Miller, a physician and infectious diseases researcher at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said it's premature to draw any conclusions — either rosy or bleak — about the course the pandemic will take.
"There's a lot of uncertainty right now," he said. "In China they nipped it in the bud in the nick of time. In the U.S. we might have, or we might not have. We just don't know."
Michael Levitt, a Nobel laureate and Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January and correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted.
Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world.
While many epidemiologists are warning of months, or even years, of massive social disruption and millions of deaths, Levitt says the data simply don't support such a dire scenario — especially in areas where reasonable social distancing measures are in place.
"What we need is to control the panic," he said. In the grand scheme, "we're going to be fine."
Here's what Levitt noticed in China: On Jan. 31, the country had 46 new deaths due to the novel coronavirus, compared with 42 new deaths the day before.
Although the number of daily deaths had increased, the rate of that increase had begun to ease off. In his view, the fact that new cases were being identified at a slower rate was more telling than the number of new cases itself. It was an early sign that the trajectory of the outbreak had shifted.
Think of the outbreak as a car racing down an open highway, he said. Although the car is still gaining speed, it's not accelerating as rapidly as before.
“This suggests that the rate of increase in the number of deaths will slow down even more over the next week,” Levitt wrote in a report he sent to friends Feb. 1 that was widely shared on Chinese social media. And soon, he predicted, the number of deaths would be decreasing every day.
Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus' rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths.
This forecast turned out to be remarkably accurate: As of March 16, China had counted a total of 80,298 cases and 3,245 deaths — in a nation of nearly 1.4 billion people where roughly 10 million die every year. The number of newly diagnosed patients has dropped to around 25 a day, with no cases of community spread reported since Wednesday.
Now Levitt, who received the 2013 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing complex models of chemical systems, is seeing similar turning points in other nations, even those that did not instill the draconian isolation measures that China did.
He analyzed data from 78 countries that reported more than 50 newcases of COVID-19 every day and sees "signs of recovery" in many of them. He's not focusing on the total number ofcases in a country, but on the number of new cases identified every day — and, especially, on the change in that number from one day to the next.
"Numbers are still noisy, but there are clear signs of slowed growth."
In South Korea, for example, newly confirmed cases are being added to the country's total each day, but the daily tally has dropped in recent weeks, remaining below 200. That suggests the outbreak there may be winding down.
In Iran, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases per day remained relatively flat last week, going from 1,053 last Monday to 1,028 on Sunday. Although that's still a lot of new cases, Levitt said, the pattern suggests the outbreak there "is past the halfway mark."
Italy, on the other hand, looks like it's still on the upswing. In that country, the number of newly confirmed cases increased on most days this past week.
In places that have managed to recover from an initial outbreak, officials must still contend with the fact that the coronavirus may return. China is now fighting to stop new waves of infection coming in from places where the virus is spreading out of control. Other countries are bound to face the same problem.
Levitt acknowledges that his figures are messy and that the official case counts in many areas are too low because testing is spotty. But even with incomplete data, "a consistent decline means there's some factor at work that is not just noise in the numbers," he said.
In other words, as long as the reasons for the inaccurate case counts remain the same, it's still useful to compare them from one day to the next.
The trajectory of deaths backs up his findings, he said, since it follows the same basic trends as the new confirmed cases. So do data from outbreaks in confined environments, such as the one on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Out of 3,711 people on board, 712 were infected, and eight died.
This unintended experiment in coronavirus spread will help researchers estimate the number of fatalities that would occur in a fully infected population, Levitt said. For instance, the Diamond Princess data allowed him to estimate that being exposed to the new coronavirus doubles a person's risk of dying in the next two months. Most people have an extremely low risk of death in a two-month period, so that risk remains extremely low even when doubled.
Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the analysis was thought-provoking, if nothing else.
"Time will tell if Levitt's predictions are correct," Reich said. "I do think that having a wide diversity of experts bringing their perspectives to the table will help decision-makers navigate the very tricky decisions they will be facing in the upcoming weeks and months."
Levitt said he's in sync with those calling for strong measures to fight the outbreak. The social-distancing mandates are critical — particularly the ban on large gatherings — because the virus is so new that the population has no immunity to it, and a vaccine is still many months away. "This is not the time to go out drinking with your buddies," he said.
Getting vaccinated against the flu is important, too, because a coronavirus outbreak that strikes in the middle of a flu epidemic is much more likely to overwhelm hospitals and increases the odds that the coronavirus goes undetected. This was probably a factor in Italy, a country with a strong anti-vaccine movement, he said.
But he also blames the media for causing unnecessary panic by focusing on the relentless increase in the cumulative number of cases and spotlighting celebrities who contract the virus. By contrast, the flu has sickened 36 million Americans since September and killed an estimated 22,000, according to the CDC, but those deaths are largely unreported.
Levitt fears the public health measures that have shut down large swaths of the economy could cause their own health catastrophe, as lost jobs lead to poverty and hopelessness. Time and again, researchers have seen that suicide rates go up when the economy spirals down.
The virus can grow exponentially only when it is undetected and no one is acting to control it, Levitt said. That's what happened in South Korea last month, when it ripped through a closed-off cult that refused to report the illness.
"People need to be considered heroes for announcing they have this virus," he said.
The goal needs to be better early detection — not just through testing but perhaps with body-temperature surveillance, which China is implementing — and immediate social isolation.
While the COVID-19 fatality rate appears to be significantly higher than that of the flu, Levitt says it is, quite simply put, "not the end of the world."
"The real situation is not as nearly as terrible as they make it out to be," he said.
Dr. Loren Miller, a physician and infectious diseases researcher at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, said it's premature to draw any conclusions — either rosy or bleak — about the course the pandemic will take.
"There's a lot of uncertainty right now," he said. "In China they nipped it in the bud in the nick of time. In the U.S. we might have, or we might not have. We just don't know."
If he is basing his work on information from China....garbage in garbage out. The last time China told the truth happened the last time they invented something.......fireworks were invented in 1,000 A.D. Pick some other more third world countries....you think they have the ability to test everyone and give good data. Iran would be an example of a poor country where I would think the data is not valuable. Why is Russia so low...are they using China's method of reporting. Hell we have money and cant even do that. Reported cases in USA is 46,000 I think that number isnt even close in terms of how many case we have had.
Look at countries like Italy and Spain. There data is more realistic. The one big outlier in data is South Korea....rate per 1 million people is lower and death rate lower. Other than they were more prepared I cant figure out why their numbers look good. They also have things like apps already for things like this already. Americans would never stand for some of the things they are doing in South Korea.
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0324/1126051-italy-coronavirus/
[h=1]Italy sees rays of hope in Covid-19 death rate data[/h]
[FONT="]Italy's top coronavirus response official has attributed two successive declines in the daily death rate to a painful national lockdown that appeared to be finally bearing fruit.[/FONT]
[h=1]Italy sees rays of hope in Covid-19 death rate data[/h]
[FONT="]Italy's top coronavirus response official has attributed two successive declines in the daily death rate to a painful national lockdown that appeared to be finally bearing fruit.[/FONT]
This is exactly correct .
In order for the USA to reach most of these dim projections you keep reading about the United States would have to be a huge outlier from everyone else before it .
But truth is we have a lot of things going for us that Italy does not .
Younger nation , 3x as many icu beds per capata, better healthcare system etc..
But yet I’m supposed to believe that our final numbers are going to be 10x worse then Italy ?
Just using my own logic looking at the charts for myself I was able to predict the peak for Italy within one day when most were saying it would be at least another 2 weeks from the time it happened .
Using the same logic I used to predict Italy I think we looking at around April 1st for peak .
If the stock market has Mid May or some other distant date priced in we could be looking at a huge recovery
the move on gold today is largely currency based, (see USD) i believe, it has broken its downtrend so definitely betting with the trend. I think the beatdown it had last week was do to margin calls, folks having to sell other assets to cover , again just speculating
GDX
1 decade monthly
good trading vehicle, channeling between $30 and $18 ish since 2016. A break above $30 abd look out
GDX
1 decade monthly
good trading vehicle, channeling between $30 and $18 ish since 2016. A break above $30 abd look out
Good luck Patsfan I don't usually invest in those types of things. We seem to be more on the same page other than your dumb Starbucks recommendation....hahaha.
It seems to make sense based on what I was going to post. Market is having a nice cumbia day thinking the house and senate will come to some sort of agreement. In a couple days that will be old news. Then New Yorks numbers will be front and center on the news and the market reacts to that.
I strongly disagree with this analysis. If the market were reacting to a stimulus agreement between the house and senate why didn't this bounce happen yesterday or last week? Heck, the House blew up the Senate's work just yesterday.
It didn't happen because that is not what the market is reacting to, although that seems to be the conventional wisdom by the financial pundits who often miss the mark.
To know what the market is reacting to, you need to understand the problem and what is going to be needed to correct the problem and get us back to some semblance of three week's ago economy.
The problem is not the coronavirus. The problem is the policymaker's reaction to the coronavirus. It wasn't the coronavirus that killed the economy. The coronavirus hurt the cruise ships, the airlines and the hotel industry. The overreaction to the coronavirus hurst everything else - primarily the decimation of small businesses and their help. Big businesses will survive but many of their help will be laid off until things turn around. Small businesses employ roughly 50% of all America's employees. Near 20% are employed by businesses with less than 20 employees. It's impossible to know how many of those small businesses will not survive this government imposed shutdown, but you can rest assured that there will be a record amount of bankruptcies amongst small businesses if the government mandates are not lifted soon.
If this thing carries on for months, no patch (Recovery Bill or whatever they're gonna call it) is gonna save this country from economic collapse. The only savior is to get people 1) healthy and 2) back to work in the immediate future before the cascading effect buries everyone, so they can pay their bills with earned money and restore their personal dignity, the dignity that comes with earning your way in life, no matter how hard that is to do.
The convergence of those two understandings came together in last night's Presidential corona briefing. I have watched most of these briefings which have gone on daily for almost two weeks now. Last night I heard the President address both of the key problems (health resolution, and the lifting of work shutdowns) positively.
Re the health resolution, he talked about the many creative ways that they are attacking the ppe shortage. Sounded to me that there were layers of blossoming solutions. They have retrofitted two massive ships to send to NY and the West coast to "hot spot" areas to help with capacity. And although he didn't mention it, I know people in the medical field in Boston. These huge, teaching hospitals have been slow to adapt their staff to man the front lines, but my sources tell me that is now getting that done. Lastly the President talked about strong anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine is being found to be a miracle drug in fighting this disease. There are very encouraging stories about its miracle nature surfacing all over the world.
Re getting Americans back to work, he emphatically stressed that we cannot let the cure be far more costly than the original problem. He talked about the monetary hardships for millions of Americans due to government enforced shutdowns. He also talked about the effects from inability to pay the rent or mortgage to the debilitation of such issues leading to paralyzing depression and even suicide. He said that he wanted to get Americans back soon, real soon.
Dr Deborah Birx supported this idea by saying that different parts of the country would be "flattening the curve" at different times. The suggestion was that where the curve is fattened that those people would be able to return to work, or in areas of the country where the virus has not taken hold in a serious way that those people would also be eligible to return to work.
So what I heard was medical solutions coming together and the philosophy that the cure cannot be more harmful than the sickness being clearly understood by the President. Those are the two factors that will get America back to work and on the long road to healing.
Lastly, evidence of this is the fact that Zoom Technology is down 10% today while everything else is jumping up. Why is that? Because teleconferencing will no longer be the workplace method of communication if people are back in their offices. Clearly, there are marketmovers who share my thoughts.
The Recovery Act patch is only a patch. It does not solve the underlying problems this economy faces right now. I suggest that it is NOT driving today's surge.
PS In an abbreviated version I wrote all of this last night as soon as the President's briefing was over.
Good luck with our recovery. I believe that it has begun. Don't forget that it is anticipation that drives the market.
Still interested in what stocks you guys think will lead the recovery and why. I've seen some good recommendations. I'd love to see more.
