The Lemon Fool

In times of trouble like this it is the duty of the CEO of a company that thinks it can help, to lobby politicians and media and make sure that he or she is heard and to have a long shopping list of what he or she can do and what they need.

It is also the job of government not to be seduced by that, but to look seriously at the best options.

To be fair to the govt, there appears to be some backtracking on Dyson's claims, and it's emerging that the design was not Dyson's anyway, but from a design co. who passed it on to Dyson to consider manufacture!

vagrantbrain
I think the government are going about sourcing ventilators the right way - it's all well and good with all these companies and groups claiming they've got a fantastic ventilator but they need to be approved, available in numbers and crucially, users need training on the equipment. Having relativity small amounts of a number of different designs is a recipe for human error with a tired and stressed NHS workforce. There is also maintenance when units inevitably break down and it's just not possible to train maintenance staff on multiple different designs in such a short time period. What we need is a large amount of ventilators of a common or similar design, and the large manufacturing companies can provide this.

The standard way to do this in war is standardise on a design and have many makers make components for that design.

A good example from the 2nd war was the Sten gun, designed to be as easy to manufacture as possible with parts been made to specifications by shops as needed.

Ventilators are more complex products and there may be different kinds needed and until they are put into service it won't be clear what the best designs are.

Still manufactures have to get out and make offers and if what they do are any good then we all win, if not they don't get more orders till things improve.

I have known of manufacturing shops getting contracts and having the whole lot sent back because they were out of spec.

In the 2nd war my Mother told me that she was working on ordnance it was all about go and no go rings. If the component would fit between one rings but not the other it was accepted, other wise it was too big, failing outer ring, or too small passing through inner ring. Mother said that there was all kinds of cheating as folk were on piece work with the rings being abused and forced on as needed not being slip fits as the inspection engineers had designed. There was no time for vernier/micrometer inspections.

Nowadays much manufacturing will be cnc and so the stuff should be exactly to tolerance but my experience with cnc is that it is quite possible for things to go out of calibration/alignment and it needs skilled folk to fix such troubles.

In the end it all comes down to the skill and standards of the workers who do the actual manufacturing, it is the CEO's job to both make sure his/her company gets orders and that what is produced is to spec.

Regards,

I guess at the moment I'd be happy with a working ventilator rather than the "best" ventilator.

If you need to get from A to B today, a Trabant now is better then a Ferrari in two months time!

John

odysseus2000 wrote:The standard way to do this in war is standardise on a design and have many makers make components for that design.

A good example from the 2nd war was the Sten gun, designed to be as easy to manufacture as possible with parts been made to specifications by shops as needed.

Ventilators are more complex products and there may be different kinds needed and until they are put into service it won't be clear what the best designs are.

AFAIK that's basically what happening at the moment - Airbus/Meggitt/GKN/RR etc are mass producing parts under licence for an existing model used in the NHS already and Dyson are building their design (not quite) from scratch. Personally I'd rather trust companies like Dyson or Airbus who have the corporate knowledge, infrastructure and experience of mass producing similar components than a well-meaning SME who would need to ramp up production 10x or 20x for the first time ever.

I've not been able to find the information but I wonder how the EU scheme is going to allocate ventilators to member states if there's not enough to meet demand. I think Boris may have made the right decision to pursue our own strategy and guaranteeing we get what we order than chancing our luck in the EU pool.

With Boris infected we have a new trouble, right at the top and likely now many of the cabinet and many MPs are infected.

Very bad news for everyone.

Begins to look to me that society and the economy will fall apart unless there is an urgent helicopter drop of money to at least stop folk worrying, especially self employed/sole traders, about how they will pay bills and feed themselves.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:Begins to look to me that society and the economy will fall apart unless....

I think it's very important not to catastrophize at times like this - if the infectivity is such that most of us are likely to be catching it, then it's not a surprise that people *are* catching it, including and especially those with roles involving much greater day-to-day contact with others, or those operating in geographic areas where the infections are currently concentrated/propagating from. That being the case, it'd be more of a surprise if Johnson & Co didn't become infected. If they began croaking en masse, more of a cause for concern, but that's unlikely to be the case.

And what's not to like about Raab stepping up

tikunetih wrote:

odysseus2000 wrote:Begins to look to me that society and the economy will fall apart unless....

I think it's very important not to catastrophize at times like this - if the infectivity is such that most of us are likely to be catching it, then it's not a surprise that people *are* catching it, including and especially those with roles involving much greater day-to-day contact with others, or those operating in geographic areas where the infections are currently concentrated/propagating from. That being the case, it'd be more of a surprise if Johnson & Co didn't become infected. If they began croaking en masse, more of a cause for concern, but that's unlikely to be the case.

And what's not to like about Raab stepping up

Yes, this is the rational view, but we are close to the psychology of crowds.

If folk who have been making a living self employed, sole traders etc suddenly find their income dropping to zero they may not think rationally.

A helicopter drop would enable such folk to cover food, utilities, poll tax etc

Regards,

In terms of the big picture (humanity/society vs. virus), I see "victory" for us as assured. All that remains unknown is the path to that victory: it could be short or it could be long. Huge uncertainty as to the path but not the destination IMO. There's currently insufficient data to make judgements, but this should/will rapidly change. Should it be necessary, every resource mankind possesses will be brought to bear. Victory, albeit at an unknown cost, is assured.

NB I've referred to the fog of war several times in recent posts, as it is apt here. For anyone unfamiliar, I would strongly recommend watching the documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Regarding markets, for a long time the psychology of crowds was the primary input to my trading strategy, so I'm not unfamiliar. In the present uncertain situation, the one thing I am certain of is that *if* markets were to head significantly lower than they already have, I would become more bullish not more bearish. With long investment horizons ahead of me, and "victory assured" (as above), these are odds I would very much welcome.

If you're a trader, though, it's a much tougher environment to gauge. But I'm not engaged in that, so I don't have to judge and align myself with micro swings in mood.

odysseus2000 wrote:
A helicopter drop would enable such folk to ...

...panic, more likely.

redsturgeon wrote:I guess at the moment I'd be happy with a working ventilator rather than the "best" ventilator.

If you need to get from A to B today, a Trabant now is better then a Ferrari in two months time!

John

The mother of my first girl friend commented that a second class ride is far better than a first class walk, when she saw my first vehicle (an ex-GPO Telephone Morris 8 Van).

TJH

tikunetih wrote:In terms of the big picture (humanity/society vs. virus), I see "victory" for us as assured. All that remains unknown is the path to that victory: it could be short or it could be long. Huge uncertainty as to the path but not the destination IMO. There's currently insufficient data to make judgements, but this should/will rapidly change. Should it be necessary, every resource mankind possesses will be brought to bear. Victory, albeit at an unknown cost, is assured.

NB I've referred to the fog of war several times in recent posts, as it is apt here. For anyone unfamiliar, I would strongly recommend watching the documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

Regarding markets, for a long time the psychology of crowds was the primary input to my trading strategy, so I'm not unfamiliar. In the present uncertain situation, the one thing I am certain of is that *if* markets were to head significantly lower than they already have, I would become more bullish not more bearish. With long investment horizons ahead of me, and "victory assured" (as above), these are odds I would very much welcome.

If you're a trader, though, it's a much tougher environment to gauge. But I'm not engaged in that, so I don't have to judge and align myself with micro swings in mood.

Yes, this is exactly how I would have thought in the20th century. It is a simple and as guaranteed as anything in life is.

However, I have abandoned it as being no longer appropriate for the 21st century.

Why?

First although the outcome is near certain for humanity, I am just one individual. If I arrange my affairs so that I become eventually wealthy it does not do me any good if I don't live a long life, or if I need a lot of capital to e.g. pay for private medical treatment of a loved one or otherwise help someone I care about in distress. It was, surprisingly, Buffett who put this thought line into my mind in one of his letters when he noted, that saving sex for ones old age might not be the best idea. Additionally we don't really know what political developments there may be. The Romanovs never expected to be overthrown and although revolution in the UK currently seems extraordinarily unlikely no one knows the future.

Secondly the markets have become much easier and much lower cost to access with anyone who wants them having real time quotes, no commission trading and access to various derivative products so that it has become possible to trade without all the disadvantages that private investors had in the last century.

Thirdly for relatively very little cost one can get schooled by very good traders via virtual rooms and learn how they approach the market and see the returns they achieve with techniques that one can apply and with much reduced risk compared to long term buy and hold. I now firmly believe that day trading with no over night risk is the safest approach in the markets, short term swings the next best technique. It become possible to earn much more by these trading techniques than by standard buy and hold approaches even if just trading the common, with derivatives the returns can vastly exceed long term buy and hold.

There are downsides, the worst imho is the amount of time I have to spend watching prices. Another is that a few bad days together can be poisonous to ones self believe and confidence and one has to develop methods to cope when things go wrong and have the fortitude to keep getting back on the horse no matter how much the last fall hurt or how one completely missed an easy opportunity. I have cussed myself badly for missing a fair bit of the gains that came from the 23rd of March to yesterday.

Using trading techniques, volatility is ones friend and the current market with a high vix is often very trader friendly whereas for a long term investor it is much easier but the potential returns since the c19 panic started have been negative whereas traders going short have done extremely well, at least the ones I know who share their performance.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:With Boris infected we have a new trouble, right at the top and likely now many of the cabinet and many MPs are infected.

Very bad news for everyone.

Begins to look to me that society and the economy will fall apart unless there is an urgent helicopter drop of money to at least stop folk worrying, especially self employed/sole traders, about how they will pay bills and feed themselves.

Regards,

We better all top ourselves..!

Boris et al will return in a week and in the meantime they will have videoconferencing!

dealtn wrote:

odysseus2000 wrote:
A helicopter drop would enable such folk to ...

...panic, more likely.

Today I was in Morrisons and nearly saw a fight break out.

The generals had laid out a plan of operation, using barriers very like DisneyLand to funnel shoppers where they wanted them to go, but there was almost no signage, breaks in the barriers and they expected the infantry to run it.

Not knowing there was a big queuing system at the other end of the store I walked between two barriers which were over 6ft apart, went to the u-scan and scanned my goods. A little behind me another shopper tried to do the same things but was stopped and told he had to go the other end of the store. I had walked through unknowingly when the store person was well away, his back to me and I had no idea I was breaking the rules. Anyhow the guy behind me had one thing and wanted a quick out and before long the store person was threatening to call the police and it got ugly.

One could argue that both the shopper and store person were behaving sensibly and it was all a fault of the layout, lack of signage etc and this was leading to other disputes as I legged it and even then I took the exit closest to my car and was told to go via the other exit as there was a system but again it wasn't signposted properly.

These things are trivial but with money its a lot more serious. When I have rented property I have been amazed at the number of tenants who use cards for their utilities, not wanting to budget and paying a whole lot more for the gas/leccy etc and having barely enough income to meet the rent and these overheads.

I am confident that many self employed people will be in this sort of situation and without money I expect them to panic.

Regards

monabri wrote:

odysseus2000 wrote:With Boris infected we have a new trouble, right at the top and likely now many of the cabinet and many MPs are infected.

Very bad news for everyone.

Begins to look to me that society and the economy will fall apart unless there is an urgent helicopter drop of money to at least stop folk worrying, especially self employed/sole traders, about how they will pay bills and feed themselves.

Regards,

We better all top ourselves..!

Boris et al will return in a week and in the meantime they will have videoconferencing!

I certainly hope so and it will be super great if he can get through this trouble with out needing any medical intervention. There is likely no one else, save the Royals, who will get treatment as good as he will get.

There is now so much fog over infection rates, whether some are immune and a whole host of other important parameters that it is impossible for me to get any steer on how bad or weak this infection really is.

I am not being helped by Neil Ferguson:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196477/ ... -lockdown/

He is now saying that the intensive care demand will peak in 2 to 3 weeks with the lockdown, but if anyone had the virus while I was shopping today in Morrisons there was nothing to stop them spreading it to the hundreds of other shoppers. I can't see how the lock down can work if one still has the supermarket experience.

Then I am reading that folk are recovering in a week, while others some in their 20's are needing respirators and needing several weeks of post care to recover and that the forces are creating tent emergency rooms all over the country and that there is a massive shortage of ventilators and personal protection equipment.

It will be instructive to see how high profile figures like Prince Charles and Boris get on, assuming that the diagnosis are correct.

South Korea seems to have handled the crisis the best and as I understand it the UK is currently no where near as advanced in its anti-virus techniques.

For now UK business are reacting so differently to the political instructions that I can see some business prospering and others collapsing. I find it near impossible to do any sensible analysis when there is e.g. Halfords apparently operating normally but being unable to source a silicate anti-freeze at my local store, requesting i drive 13 miles to another store, while Screwfix had a universal anti-freeze and served me via a disneyland type of queue system.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:Yes, this is exactly how I would have thought in the20th century.

Excellent (attempted) put down, even if you didn't mean it that way!

odysseus2000 wrote:There are downsides, the worst imho is the amount of time I have to spend watching prices. Another is that a few bad days together can be poisonous to ones self believe and confidence and one has to develop methods to cope when things go wrong and have the fortitude to keep getting back on the horse no matter how much the last fall hurt or how one completely missed an easy opportunity. I have cussed myself badly for missing a fair bit of the gains that came from the 23rd of March to yesterday.

I essentially ceased all shorter-term trading when (a) I no longer "needed" the money (financial goals met); and (b) decided I really had better things to do with my time (my life), having scratched the intellectual itch. Because as you say, it can be immensely time consuming, easily crowding out pretty much everything else in order to have the mental bandwidth to always be reading and aligned with the market's mood. A decade+ of that was sufficient for me.

For the past decade or so I've used an all-weather portfolio that's capable of being left alone for lengthy periods. In investment terms, this present crisis has been quite interesting seeing how the various parts behave. No surprises so far. Blissful inactivity. Zero stress.

Lesser returns than the previous trading strategy, and a different return profile, but sufficient returns for my requirements, which is after all the primary objective of an investment strategy. The portfolio's purpose being to allow me to live how I wish to, as opposed to operating the portfolio actually being my life. And importantly, less chance of "accidents", more sleeping like a baby.

But we're all different, and have different goals, each to their own etc.. Good luck with yours.

I thought the supermarkets were taking precautions?

At our local Tesco Express, there was a staff member stood outside limiting the number of people in the store. Outside was parked a trolley with paper towels and a disinfectant spray ( which caused amusement when I sprayed my hands with it as well as the baskets adjacent to the trolley). Inside the store, areas were delineated with yellow tape.

They should have been doing this 2 weeks ago!

tikunetih wrote:

odysseus2000 wrote:Yes, this is exactly how I would have thought in the20th century.

Excellent (attempted) put down, even if you didn't mean it that way!

odysseus2000 wrote:There are downsides, the worst imho is the amount of time I have to spend watching prices. Another is that a few bad days together can be poisonous to ones self believe and confidence and one has to develop methods to cope when things go wrong and have the fortitude to keep getting back on the horse no matter how much the last fall hurt or how one completely missed an easy opportunity. I have cussed myself badly for missing a fair bit of the gains that came from the 23rd of March to yesterday.

I essentially ceased all shorter-term trading when (a) I no longer "needed" the money (financial goals met); and (b) decided I really had better things to do with my time (my life), having scratched the intellectual itch. Because as you say, it can be immensely time consuming, easily crowding out pretty much everything else in order to have the mental bandwidth to always be reading and aligned with the market's mood. A decade+ of that was sufficient for me.

For the past decade or so I've used an all-weather portfolio that's capable of being left alone for lengthy periods. In investment terms, this present crisis has been quite interesting seeing how the various parts behave. No surprises so far. Blissful inactivity. Zero stress.

Lesser returns than the previous trading strategy, and a different return profile, but sufficient returns for my requirements, which is after all the primary objective of an investment strategy. The portfolio's purpose being to allow me to live how I wish to, as opposed to operating the portfolio actually being my life. And importantly, less chance of "accidents", more sleeping like a baby.

But we're all different, and have different goals, each to their own etc.. Good luck with yours.

Fabulous how you have got your goals met and other things have more meaning for you now.

A sort of earthly financial heaven and it is wonderful that you have achieved this.

It shows the power of shorter term trading and how it has been such a blessing for you, setting you into this happy situation.

Thank you for sharing your success and may you be blessed with a long life to enjoy what you have achieved.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:
There is now so much fog over infection rates, whether some are immune and a whole host of other important parameters that it is impossible for me to get any steer on how bad or weak this infection really is.

I am not being helped by Neil Ferguson:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196477/ ... -lockdown/

He is now saying that the intensive care demand will peak in 2 to 3 weeks with the lockdown, but if anyone had the virus while I was shopping today in Morrisons there was nothing to stop them spreading it to the hundreds of other shoppers. I can't see how the lock down can work if one still has the supermarket experience.

Then I am reading that folk are recovering in a week, while others some in their 20's are needing respirators and needing several weeks of post care to recover and that the forces are creating tent emergency rooms all over the country and that there is a massive shortage of ventilators and personal protection equipment.

It will be instructive to see how high profile figures like Prince Charles and Boris get on, assuming that the diagnosis are correct.



Regards,

Ferguson is a scientist and he is responding and changing the story as the evidence changes. ICU demand will peak as he says because the lock down is a numbers game and it is not about reducing transmission to zero which would be impractical but reducing by maybe a factor of 100 or so. It will have a large downward impact on transmission.

It will not be instructive overall to see what happens to Charles or Boris or any other individual. They may experience few symptoms or be hospitalised or even die, statistically likely the first with c1% chance of the last. Clearly they are lucky in that it is unlikely they will come to harm due to lack of medical resources which is a fate that could befall any of the rest of us.

Take care out there.

John

Ferguson is a scientist and he is responding and changing the story as the evidence changes. ICU demand will peak as he says because the lock down is a numbers game and it is not about reducing transmission to zero which would be impractical but reducing by maybe a factor of 100 or so. It will have a large downward impact on transmission.

It will not be instructive overall to see what happens to Charles or Boris or any other individual. They may experience few symptoms or be hospitalised or even die, statistically likely the first with c1% chance of the last. Clearly they are lucky in that it is unlikely they will come to harm due to lack of medical resources which is a fate that could befall any of the rest of us.

Take care out there.

John

Yes, Ferguson is a scientist, unused to being in the media spot light and now being sought out by the high and mighty and listened to. Lots of potential there for him to get over confident and forget the basis of science which is that if you don't know what is going on, you get data and then analyse the data. You might give expectations based on Monte Carlo but they should be given very large uncertainties. To know what is going on requires measurements and then targeted lock down of individuals as done in South Korea. Worse imho is that he was also quoted as making statements about the economic impacts, something he is not qualified to do.

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.

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.

However, what most needs to happen now is the collection of real data, preferably test everyone and for those with the c19, mandatory isolation with their food and supplies being brought in by volunteers for the duration of the virus incubation period. Such kinds of sniper like suppression of known infected individual is imho far more likely to work, as shown in South Korea, than the current near random shot gun approach that is hitting lots of folk who have no illness and putting them in situations were they can easily get it.

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:
Yes, Ferguson is a scientist, unused to being in the media spot light and now being sought out by the high and mighty and listened to.

Lots of potential there for him to get over confident and forget the basis of science which is that if you don't know what is going on, you get data and then analyse the data.

You might give expectations based on Monte Carlo but they should be given very large uncertainties.

To know what is going on requires measurements and then targeted lock down of individuals as done in South Korea. Worse imho is that he was also quoted as making statements about the economic impacts, something he is not qualified to do.

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.

Yes, why listen to a 'potentially overconfident' academic such as Neil Ferguson, a professor of mathematical biology who specialises in the epidemiology of infectious disease spread in humans and animals, when we can get a much better view on the UK virus situation based on your recent visit to Morrisons?

As an aside, your view that 'the stay at home policy will not work as well as Monte Carlo simulations suggest' (based on that Morrisons visit...) seems to be forgetting the parallel strategy that the UK is running, which is to instruct millions of people in the most vulnerable groups to simply not leave their homes at all for the next 12 weeks...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess