Friends sharing thoughts...

[haber]

Sorry in advance for another wall of text! There's something about the disconnect on this issue that has my brain going 1000 miles an hour. I'm curious about why that disconnect exists, and I guess the only way I can do that is by typing A LOT OF WORRRRRDS.

Personally I'd guess we'll lose quite a bit more than that to coronavirus. I've read that in past pandemics, there are typically a couple "waves" of cases, which makes logical sense ... this is the first wave, but as cases/deaths slow bc of the containment measures in place, we'll start loosening those, resulting in a flare-up, etc.

Trump was on TV the other day saying 100-200k deaths would be a "victory", and I've read truly scary projections that WITHOUT quarantining, social distancing, etc, death estimates were in the millions. Another estimate I saw was 500k for the UK, which is about 1/5th the size of the US in terms of population (again, without any social counter-measures)

I'm not a doctor, epidemiologist, historian, or statistician, but given what I've read and what Fauci, etc, and even Trump are now saying, 100-200k doesn't seem that unreasonable as a guess. I hope I'm wrong and it's a lot fewer.

Here's an interesting story, too, about how a single soccer match lead to a ton of cases https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer-game-milan-may-major-192403102.html

As for the media/stock market, personally I'd expand on the entire idea. Here are leading causes of deaths in the US (for 2017, from here https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)

Heart disease: 647,457
Cancer: 599,108
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 146,383
Alzheimer’s disease: 121,404
Diabetes: 83,564
Influenza and pneumonia: 55,672
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,633
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 47,173

Outside of the occasional "miracle" cure for cancer, I can't remember ANY on-going media coverage of any of these topics, and that goes for CNN, MSNBC, FOX, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and everybody in between. Admittedly I don't watch cable TV/news, so maybe I've missed something, but I doubt it.

And certainly the market doesn't care about a flare-up of strokes or heart disease deaths.

If you expand the question like that, I think the answer becomes more obvious: the flu, accidents, strokes, etc, are all more or less "known" quantities that we've llved with and understood for years. It's "baked in" to the market already, and it doesn't make the news because it's not newsworthy. Nobody is tuning in to news/talk programs (of any political affiliation) for a leading piece of "flu deaths once again within usual range".

There are a ton of smart people at hedge funds, etc. If this was just an overblown panic, I don't think the market would be reacting the way it is. Put another way, if there was no evidence/data/science behind this and it was all just an over-reaction specifically by liberal-leaning media, IMO the market would have sniffed that out in half a second.

Personally I think the market is reacting the the reality that we're faced with no great options, just ones that are less sh*tty than others. You either shut down the economy to prevent the spread (HUGE economic ramifications), or you let people go about their business and potentially have 100's of thousands, maybe 1M+, people die (HUGE economic ramifications).

Sorry again for so many words. Hope you had a great weekend and that you make some $$$$ today!