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My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

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Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#51

Post by tomerico »

downerending wrote: post #44
tomerico wrote: post #31

Looking at countries with wide community spread[1] the spread is very clearly tied to cold weather (Europe, Korea, and Iran). This pattern is similar to other air transmitted viruses such as the Flu. Warmer countries seem to be resilient despite some having higher density and lower hygiene standards (e.g. India). Given that the default assumption should be the COVID-19 will follow the flu pattern of diminishing rapid…

When I see a log plot bending up, my default assumption is stunning growth for a considerable period. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/...

Or it could be an indication that in some countries, the current weather enables exponential growth. This could rapidly change as it did in China.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#52

Post by rayshan »

Good insides on what companies can and cannot withstand a once-in-a-lifetime event. My look into the 2008 Great Recession was very helpful with my pattern matching. 98 out of 100 stocks lost money during that recession, but most of them did super well during the longest recovery period in U.S. history. Even AIG made people a bunch of money.

Here's the full dataset of 1363 mid cap + stocks that traded during the 2008 recession, and their performances: https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great-recess...

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#53

Post by eachro »

mynegation wrote: post #33
Apocryphon wrote: post #2

> this is one of those once in 100 years catastrophic events that annihilates those who provide insurance against it and those who don’t take insurance to protect themselves against it because they treat it as the exposed bet that they can take because it virtually never happens. They said 2008 was a once in a lifetime event, too. So what’s the next black swan that will unsettle the market in 2032? The Big One finall…

I work in finance. We learned a ton from 2008. The amount of new regulation and oversight that came as a result is insane. We will learn from 2020 too.

Does the added regulation, oversight help prevent the problems that led to the 08 crisis? Also curious to know what/how these learnings manifest themselves outside of goverment imposed regulations.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#54

Post by tomerico »

rmolin88 wrote: post #36
tomerico wrote: post #31

Looking at countries with wide community spread[1] the spread is very clearly tied to cold weather (Europe, Korea, and Iran). This pattern is similar to other air transmitted viruses such as the Flu. Warmer countries seem to be resilient despite some having higher density and lower hygiene standards (e.g. India). Given that the default assumption should be the COVID-19 will follow the flu pattern of diminishing rapid…

Very true! But the second wave, when winter returns in October, hit even harder [0] See Deadly second wave section in the Spanish Flu [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

This is obviously a possibility. The longer term is harder to predict.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#55

Post by yodsanklai »

gdubs wrote: post #45
yodsanklai wrote: post #26

It's very hard to have an informed opinion on the virus. Different actors have different incentives. Medias try to sell ads, politicians want to be elected (or not held responsible), institutions like WHO are political (I don't really trust them after seeing their treatment of Taiwan) and have their own agendd, even experts have their own biases and are selected by medias. And we are all deeply biased, and tend to lo…

Just to be clear people, don’t just go to the doctor if you think you might have coronavirus — call first and seek their professional recommendation. They may want to come to you to do a swab, rather than have people randomly walking in and possibly infecting others.

> if you think you might have coronavirus

Actually, very few people have reasons to think they have the coronavirus now. Of course, if you come back from an infected area, you should be extra careful and follow standard procedures defined by your local government. Right now most people with flu symptoms simply have a cold or the flu, and not the wuhan virus.

I've just listened to an interview of a French doctor and what is happening now is that hospitals are getting overwhelmed with regular people who want to be tested for the coronavirus.

The coronavirus isn't that different from a regular flu virus in terms of care. Mostly, you just need to stay home waiting for it to pass (and of course avoid infecting others). Only people with severe symptoms should go to the hospital.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#56

Post by danenania »

Angostura wrote: post #50
danenania wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get the seeming dismissal of masks as a tool to contain spread. I understand that there's a shortage and healthcare workers are the priority (as they should be), but it seems to me that in theory the absolute fastest way to contain this would be to get everyone on the planet wearing masks for a month or two. I keep seeing statements to the effect of "a mask only helps if you're already sick", but we do…

The great thing about badly fitting masks is people wearing them tend to touch their face a lot more.

Afaik the primary method of transmission is believed to be saliva droplets in the air, expelled via talking, sneezing, or coughing. I think even a badly fitting mask would cut this drastically?

Washing hands, avoiding touching your face, and other measures like these mainly help with what seems to be a far less common vector of transmission via surfaces and physical contact, where the virus only remains active for a very short time.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#57

Post by lucb1e »

djohnston wrote: post #5

I am interested in seeing how much more effective China's current system will be at addressing the outbreak vs highly developed western democracies. If there's one thing a technologically advanced dictatorship like the CCP should excel at, it's this.

I heard a podcast of the "University of Flanders" which says that dictatorships are not actually effective in this way. Reasons given (i.e. these points are all his words, not mine):

- They're often very corrupt

- It's commonly believed that Nazi Germany relieved the crisis of the 1930s, but that is propaganda and Hitler probably made it worse.

- The propaganda also paints a picture of a strictly organized state, but nothing is further from the truth. Nazi Germany consisted of cogs that didn't work together so much as against each other (the army against the party, the SS against the SA, etc.). Coordinated chaos.

- One man can impossibly oversee everything, he can't enforce his vision in all these different places, resulting in a lot of different "clans" that have power in the name of Hitler.

- Our democracy is a lot of talk and little action, lots of checks and balances, where the public can check what the government does and can remove them from power. That sounds inefficient, but the decisions are carried by the population and let's keep it like that.

Source (in Dutch) with a timestamp where he gets more on-topic (before that is more background info): https://youtu.be/_866RrJJy6A?t=600

I don't say I find it super convincing by the way, certainly points like "one man can't oversee it all" doesn't rule out the option of a group of supposedly smart people that oversee it all (much like today) and make the rules for everyone. No argument is made for democracy, the main argument is against dictatorships with weasel words like "often very corrupt" and against Hitler's dictatorship specifically (when there are more current, seemingly better-functioning and longer-lasting examples like, indeed, in China).

Of course, that I don't find the arguments made very convincing also doesn't mean that I'm in favor of a group of smart people ruling over everyone or against democracy or something.

I just don't know, but this is a datapoint where someone claims that this thought "a dictator should excel at this" may not be right. The podcast typically invites researchers in the field that are often very knowledgeable and give much more convincing presentations; this person is a historian so presumably also knows a thing or two about the topic, even if I still have some questions.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#58

Post by dv_dt »

danenania wrote: post #34
katmannthree wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a terrific example of normalcy bias, a "tendency for people to believe that things will always function the way they normally have functioned and therefore to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects"[0]. China has provided roughly a month's advance warning on how this virus plays out in terms of infectivity and severity (~20% of cases are serious / require medical atte…

I really don't get the seeming dismissal of masks as a tool to contain spread. I understand that there's a shortage and healthcare workers are the priority (as they should be), but it seems to me that in theory the absolute fastest way to contain this would be to get everyone on the planet wearing masks for a month or two. I keep seeing statements to the effect of "a mask only helps if you're already sick", but we do…

You can't ramp production that fast, especially since so many factories moved to China. So given a limited resource, you have to discourage people from buying out all the supply so you can preserve your healthcare capability of the medical staff. I would guess it's a judgement call that ensuring medical personnel have masks is a greater epidemic fighting effect relative to the epidemic reduction in casual people wearing masks.

You can always publicise an alternate policy when the mask supply does increase later..

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#59

Post by lucb1e »

bob33212 wrote: post #42
crystaldev wrote: post #27

Coronavirus has been circulating for months now. Many of us have already beaten it. That's why spread is linear and not gripping the world like it should be at this point: The "spread" is a measurement of panic and vigilant diagnosis. This is most carefully observed cold of all time. I was stocking up on dry goods and such like everybody else. After the past few days I feel like a panicked fool. Almost every single d…

If the death rate was 10% across the board we would know how far it has spread. But this cold may have a 0.001% hospitalization or death rate for people in great health. There could already be 100,000 people infected in the states. We may be close to the point of saying "fuck it. False alarm this is just a cold. Carry on". Hard to know for sure though until a couple weeks go by

From another comment, in Italy the numbers are worse than previously reported rather than better.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22476675

I did not check their source. Just saying that "we may be close to saying `false alarm`" seems almost certainly ill-informed.

Re: My Thoughts About the Coronavirus: Ray Dalio

#60

Post by tomerico »

rayshan wrote: post #52

Good insides on what companies can and cannot withstand a once-in-a-lifetime event. My look into the 2008 Great Recession was very helpful with my pattern matching. 98 out of 100 stocks lost money during that recession, but most of them did super well during the longest recovery period in U.S. history. Even AIG made people a bunch of money. Here's the full dataset of 1363 mid cap + stocks that traded during the 2008…

That is super interesting. You should probably submit it as a separate submission!
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