Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

[redsturgeon]

By contrast I think it will be very instructive to see what happens to Charles and Boris. If, as I hope, they are both cured quickly with no serious down time that would be positive, showing that with the right meds and medics or good immune systems that there is a relatively painless way out.

If by contrast if one or both of them needs medical interventions that will drive home that even with the best meds and medics the health service is currently unable to easily defeat this virus.



Regards,

Sorry Ody, you are quite wrong on this. This is a matter of fact. What happens to Charles and Boris has little overall significance except on a personal level to them and on a psychological level to a wider audience.

Hard data vs anecdote.

John

[sackofspuds]

I think deaths per million is probably the best metric.

UK has 11, Sweden 10, Denmark 9. Not a huge difference so far.

Sweden is going to be a very interesting case study in a few years, after subsequent waves of the virus.

For comparison, Italy 151, France 31 and Netherlands 32.

USA 5, Australia 0.5, Singapore 0.3.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

[vrdiver]

By contrast I think it will be very instructive to see what happens to Charles and Boris. If, as I hope, they are both cured quickly with no serious down time that would be positive, showing that with the right meds and medics or good immune systems that there is a relatively painless way out.

If by contrast if one or both of them needs medical interventions that will drive home that even with the best meds and medics the health service is currently unable to easily defeat this virus.



Regards,

Sorry Ody, you are quite wrong on this. This is a matter of fact. What happens to Charles and Boris has little overall significance except on a personal level to them and on a psychological level to a wider audience.

Hard data vs anecdote.

John

Actually, I think Ody has a point; if Boris and / or Charles succumb to this, it will emphasise the seriousness of the situation and perhaps be a driver for people to take precautions far more seriously than they have been doing up until now. Equally of course, if Boris carries on and shrugs it off as a minor inconvenience, it may well send a message that this is not serious, so whilst from a statistical basis the two cases are insignificant, at a cultural and social influencing level, they may well be very significant.

[redsturgeon]

I think deaths per million is probably the best metric.

UK has 11, Sweden 10, Denmark 9. Not a huge difference so far.

Sweden is going to be a very interesting case study in a few years, after subsequent waves of the virus.

For comparison, Italy 151, France 31 and Netherlands 32.

USA 5, Australia 0.5, Singapore 0.3.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

I would tend to agree that deaths per million is probably a good metric to use if you wish to compare countries performance on this. However there is a real issue in terms of standardisation of registration of cause of death.

Ultimately when all this is done it will be instructive to look at change in overall death rates during the time of the pandemic. It may be less of an increase than one might imagine.

John

[redsturgeon]

By contrast I think it will be very instructive to see what happens to Charles and Boris. If, as I hope, they are both cured quickly with no serious down time that would be positive, showing that with the right meds and medics or good immune systems that there is a relatively painless way out.

If by contrast if one or both of them needs medical interventions that will drive home that even with the best meds and medics the health service is currently unable to easily defeat this virus.



Regards,

Sorry Ody, you are quite wrong on this. This is a matter of fact. What happens to Charles and Boris has little overall significance except on a personal level to them and on a psychological level to a wider audience.

Hard data vs anecdote.

John

Actually, I think Ody has a point; if Boris and / or Charles succumb to this, it will emphasise the seriousness of the situation and perhaps be a driver for people to take precautions far more seriously than they have been doing up until now. Equally of course, if Boris carries on and shrugs it off as a minor inconvenience, it may well send a message that this is not serious, so whilst from a statistical basis the two cases are insignificant, at a cultural and social influencing level, they may well be very significant.

Which is why I say, "on a psychological level to a wider audience" .

I don't class this as "instructive". While it may alter behaviour as you say.

John

[odysseus2000]

These are some notes from an ER clinician in the US. For those unaware of twitter, one has to click on the image and then the right errors till there are none to see the whole post:

https://twitter.com/smartertrader/statu ... 60866?s=20

https://twitter.com/smartertrader/statu ... 36194?s=20

https://twitter.com/smartertrader/statu ... 28065?s=20

The first link first page notes that of the patients they are seeing, 81% have mild symptoms, 14% severe, 5 % critical, no age distribution given.

If this is correct about 1/5th of the people who catch the virus will need medical intervention. If everyone in the UK catches it that is about 0.2x66 million = 13.2 million.

Alternatively if you look at the reported cases:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... Y/htmlview

There are 14,600 confirmed in the UK. If we assume that the 81% with mild symptoms don’t get reported but the serious and severe do, then we can estimate that there are

14,600/0.19 = 76,842 infected people in the UK.

If we assume the time to symptoms is 2-11 as stated (5 on average), is 11 days, then if we show no symptoms after 11 days it is likely we have not been infected. If one can grocery shop every 11 days the chance of anyone of us infecting someone else is low and if anyone who displays symptoms has their grocery/supplies etc delivered we can suppress the virus.

It would be much better to test everyone, but if there are insufficient tests to even do a sample it seems that counting and delivery of food for those with symptoms is about the best option we currently have.

To get the economy running safely we need fast and low cost testing, with out it we are all guessing about things which are important and able to cause serious economic and personal damage.

Regards,

[tikunetih]

Given what I experienced in Morrisons yesterday, the stay at home policy will not work as well as Monte Carlo simulations suggest as there were literally hundreds of folk all together with every opportunity for the virus to jump about.

For shopping, I can recommend donning heavy coat, wellington boots, mask, goggles, hat and protective gauntlets - it's like the parting of the Red Sea crossed with Supermarket Sweep.

[jackdaww]

US markets have been rallying, could be a dead cat bounce, but Trump seems certain that the US can be opened up by Easter:

Trump knows that if he screws up here he loses the election, but if he gets the US back to work by Easter he walks it.

Regards,

====================

canute thought he could stop the tide .... trump thinks he can stop the virus.....

That is incorrect. Canute knew kings & princes could not stop the tide or many similar forces, but he was proving that point to his courtiers. Many, like many readers of history since, failed to get the point.

Trump is one such

regards, dspp

=====================

thanks , i stand corrected .

i just thought it was a good way to make the point .

[colin]

Given what I experienced in Morrisons yesterday, the stay at home policy will not work as well as Monte Carlo simulations suggest as there were literally hundreds of folk all together with every opportunity for the virus to jump about.

For shopping, I can recommend donning heavy coat, wellington boots, mask, goggles, hat and protective gauntlets - it's like the parting of the Red Sea crossed with Supermarket Sweep.

Maybe it's too late but recently I have made a practice of donning disposable vinyl gloves before entering supermarkets and handling trolley and goods, I disinfect the gloves before and after with a meths solution as surprisingly I can't find any hand sanitizer. We should be very wary of trolleys and baskets.

[odysseus2000]

Given what I experienced in Morrisons yesterday, the stay at home policy will not work as well as Monte Carlo simulations suggest as there were literally hundreds of folk all together with every opportunity for the virus to jump about.

For shopping, I can recommend donning heavy coat, wellington boots, mask, goggles, hat and protective gauntlets - it's like the parting of the Red Sea crossed with Supermarket Sweep.

Maybe it's too late but recently I have made a practice of donning disposable vinyl gloves before entering supermarkets and handling trolley and goods, I disinfect the gloves before and after with a meths solution as surprisingly I can't find any hand sanitizer. We should be very wary of trolleys and baskets.

Perhaps one could have a UV light box for trolleys & baskets.

The problem with clothes & such is that if the virus gets on them it can live for about 3 days, so ideally one needs to have a way to clean them or have a disposable over suit.

Washing trolley & basket handles leads to fluid on floors etc leading to slip hazards.

For aerosols, masks seem the only solution.

Still think that testing is the best solution & anyone who can make a low cost, fast & accurate test can make good profits.

Regards,

[colin]

For shopping, I can recommend donning heavy coat, wellington boots, mask, goggles, hat and protective gauntlets - it's like the parting of the Red Sea crossed with Supermarket Sweep.

Maybe it's too late but recently I have made a practice of donning disposable vinyl gloves before entering supermarkets and handling trolley and goods, I disinfect the gloves before and after with a meths solution as surprisingly I can't find any hand sanitizer. We should be very wary of trolleys and baskets.

Perhaps one could have a UV light box for trolleys & baskets.

The problem with clothes & such is that if the virus gets on them it can live for about 3 days, so ideally one needs to have a way to clean them or have a disposable over suit.

Washing trolley & basket handles leads to fluid on floors etc leading to slip hazards.

For aerosols, masks seem the only solution.

Still think that testing is the best solution & anyone who can make a low cost, fast & accurate test can make good profits.

Regards,

Wearing disposable gloves and dissinfecting them is a practical method of protection available to us all.

[funduffer]

How many people in the UK have, or have had, CV19 today?

I have asked myself this question, as it is certainly much larger than the number of reported case numbers.

So I have come up with my own estimate, based on deaths and reported cases data from PHE.

I assume deaths data is much more accurate than case data. We can count the dead and know if they had CV19. We only report CV19 cases if they come to hospital.
I assume the death rate is 1% (a bit lower than that reported in S Korea, where they have done the most testing, and a consensus estimate from many virologists).
I assume that deaths on average occur 21 days after contracting CV19 (and it being reported).
I assume the rate of increase of reported cases is the same as the rate of increase of actual cases.

Using these assumptions, there were 1019 deaths in the UK by 28th March (yesterday)
Assuming the 1% death rate, then these deaths came from 101,900 actual cases 21 days previously, on 7th March.
There were 271 reported cases by 7th March, and that now totals 17,089 by yesterday, a 63-fold increase.
If I apply this factor to the estimate of actual cases of 7th March, I get 6.4M cases today, or around 10% of the UK population.

If I apply the same calculations to Italy, I get 15.75m cases, or more than 25% of their population.

We introduced lockdown 2 weeks after Italy did. We will be in Italy's position in roughly 2 weeks time.

Herd immunity must be starting to kick in if these estimates are even vaguely correct.

FD

[odysseus2000]

Herd immunity must be starting to kick in if these estimates are even vaguely correct.

FD

Also overwhelming of the NHS.

If 20% of the putative 6.4 million need medical attention, that is 1.28 million.

Regards,

[Midsmartin]

If you haven't seen it, the Italian town where they tested everyone, twice, is interesting. They found 60 out of 3000 people were asymptomatic carriers.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... d-covid-19

They didn't have an antibody test to use as well unfortunately.

[odysseus2000]

This sort of Italian unrest, as shown in this 2 min 58 second video, is why I think we need helicopter money now before things get to this level in the UK:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsNWbfatRwg

Regards,

[johnhemming]

The report talks about Italy having a big cash economy. These are people who were not on the unemployment, but were outside the tax and benefits system. Hence the situation leaves them destitute. As far as I can tell (apart from people who are not entitled to state support) households in the UK should be getting something from somewhere in order to pay for food. Furthermore the furlough cash and other support will come through at some stage. (as in employers may pay this month and get the cash for that in April).

[johnhemming]

If we can get an antibody test then that will be good. It will not be practical to wipe out the infection in large areas merely by trying to find out who is infected at any one time.

[zico]

If we can get an antibody test then that will be good. It will not be practical to wipe out the infection in large areas merely by trying to find out who is infected at any one time.

Apparently this will be available to NHS staff in the coming week. No doubt we will hear talk of "ramping up", but the key thing is to get this test out to groups which most need to know - probably, NHS, care staff, police, key workers, sick/disabled, elderly then the rest of us.

The antibody test will be crucial in informing where Covid-19 is on the range -very widely spread but most people get no symptoms, down to - not widespread at all but very few people have no symptoms. Paradoxically, the more widespread it has been, the better.

Stock markets hate uncertainty so this test will remove some uncertainty - though it may not be good news, at least it should be definite news.
Market likely to move quite a way, but in which direction? Possibly a very good time for straddle FTSE options?

[odysseus2000]

The report talks about Italy having a big cash economy. These are people who were not on the unemployment, but were outside the tax and benefits system. Hence the situation leaves them destitute. As far as I can tell (apart from people who are not entitled to state support) households in the UK should be getting something from somewhere in order to pay for food. Furthermore the furlough cash and other support will come through at some stage. (as in employers may pay this month and get the cash for that in April).

The UK is thought to have a 10% (£150b in 2014) shadow economy:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ow-economy

If this number is accurate and it is now shut down, it is not hard to imagine that some folk will get into trouble not unlike what is happening in Southern Italy.

Even for the folk who are legal in all things and registered etc, there is going to a hole in their accounts until they get some money. A lot of people, in my experience, do not have much in the way of savings to fall back on.

Regards,

[johnhemming]

Our benefits system, however, tends to qualify people on the basis of being means tested. Those on the continent are often more driven by contributions. Hence we tend not to end up with people being destitute in material numbers.