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Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

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Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#41

Post by bretpiatt »

empath75 wrote: post #33
ethbro wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health insurance will be fine. There was a study (no citation handy) that looked at severe flu seasons, and their impact on health insurers. Barely a blip. Remember, ~80% of people have minimal symptoms after being infected with SARS-CoV-2. You can therefore absorb a lot of care for 20%, assuming most people are insured...

This is going to be 20 times worse than the worst flu seasons.

I don't see how that can be the case.

Here's the data from DC on the Flu https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html

Over the past decade a low season of 140,000 hospitalizations to a high of 810,000. For this to be 20x worse you'd need each stay from the flu to be 1 day and each for COVID-19 to be 20, and then we'd need to reach somewhere between 700,000 - 4,000,000 positive COVID-19 cases in the U.S. under the current testing methods which leads to approximately a 20% hospitalization rate.

On the death calculation COVID-19 would need to kill 240,000 to 1.2M for a 20x outcome. This is more possible if you go to the low end and we limited mitigation efforts (which we aren't).

Flu, like automobile accidents, are a massive impact on society though because they are now a normal occurrence do not get the media coverage.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#42

Post by imglorp »

agustif wrote: post #31
tim333 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berkshire the company is one of the US's biggest taxpayers. Buffett himself is giving most of his money to charity (the Gates foundation).

75% of Gates Foundation's money end's up in big four consulting firms, which by gates himself do a better work at deploying money than other more rational actors like local governments or communities. So yeah, prob that's not charity too... it's just a way to get the maximum available tax cut, you donate to your own or your friends charity and he or she funnels backs the money where you need it to be.

Source?

Just looking at the annual letter, they're out there doing good things in third world health impact.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#43

Post by dhimes »

imglorp wrote: post #38
simonh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the level Berkshire operates at the calculation is different from generically investing in the market. Buffet buys companies, or big chunks of them, so what matters is the risk profile and liquidity of the individual company. Also when he buys by definition he will create the bottom price of the stock. Him buying will make it go up, so he can’t wait until the price hits bottom, he waits until he has the best buyin…

Okay since you opened the door to playing "call the bottom" where do you think it will be? I'll swag first. The end will be in sight when the US new case rate hits its inflection point and begins decreasing. From that you can sorta tell when things will settle down biology-wise.

So that's a couple of weeks away, according to the projections I posted yesterday. Peak deaths in the US are estimated for 15 April.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#44

Post by thaumasiotes »

wiredfool wrote: post #9
markdown wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance doesn't normally cover pandemics.

Insurance covers insurable events, some of them may be triggered by a pandemic, and some of those might be excluded. Check your fine print. * Life insurance is probably going to take a hit. My life insurance doesn't mention pandemic or acts of god. Suicide yes. Pandemic no. * Auto insurance is probably going to be marginally more profitable as miles driven drop. * Home/Property isn't likely to be heavily affected. *…

> My life insurance doesn't mention pandemic or acts of god. Suicide yes. Pandemic no.

I'd be pretty surprised if this wasn't true. Who's taking out life insurance exclusively for predictable causes of death? You don't insure those, you avoid them.

"Acts of god" are most of the reason you'd want life insurance in the first place.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#45

Post by thaumasiotes »

bretpiatt wrote: post #41
empath75 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to be 20 times worse than the worst flu seasons.

I don't see how that can be the case. Here's the data from DC on the Flu https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html Over the past decade a low season of 140,000 hospitalizations to a high of 810,000. For this to be 20x worse you'd need each stay from the flu to be 1 day and each for COVID-19 to be 20, and then we'd need to reach somewhere between 700,000 - 4,000,000 positive COVID-19 cases in the U.S. und…

> Flu, like automobile accidents, are a massive impact on society though because they are now a normal occurrence do not get the media coverage.

The flu gets a lot less coverage, because it mostly kills people who were going to die anyway. This is not true of automobile accidents, and they are correspondingly viewed as much worse.

There was a brief look at this on EconLog: https://www.econlib.org/who-are-all-the-people-dying-of-flu/

> Thus, Americans 85+ experience almost over 40% of all combined flu/pneumonia mortality, while Americans under 45 years old endure less than 2%. The main reason we rarely hear about flu deaths is that when people die of flu, folks at the funeral probably call “old age” the cause of death. Logically, this isn’t even wrong, because there’s joint causation; if the deceased weren’t old, they almost certainly wouldn’t have died of flu. And philosophically, you can accurately say that most people who die of flu would soon have died of something else.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#46

Post by mamon »

kneel wrote: post #11

They really need to tax this man, he's even on record saying how he needs to be taxed more.

Billionares say things like that all the time but that's just for publicity. Truth is, if he really wanted to be taxed more, he could. There's no need to change any laws for that. His Berkshire Hathaway is already claiming a lot of tax breaks to lower their tax liabilities - if he wants to contribute more to federal budget he just needs to stop doing that :) After all, claiming a tax break is a privilege, it's not mandatory.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#47

Post by empath75 »

bretpiatt wrote: post #41
empath75 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to be 20 times worse than the worst flu seasons.

I don't see how that can be the case. Here's the data from DC on the Flu https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html Over the past decade a low season of 140,000 hospitalizations to a high of 810,000. For this to be 20x worse you'd need each stay from the flu to be 1 day and each for COVID-19 to be 20, and then we'd need to reach somewhere between 700,000 - 4,000,000 positive COVID-19 cases in the U.S. und…

We had 500 deaths yesterday. We’re doubling ever 2-3 days. I’ll take 3 days.

At the end of next week, we’ll have 2000 deaths a day. At the end of two weeks, we’ll have almost 10,000. We’ll have 200k dead in roughly three weeks.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#48

Post by bloomer »

bretpiatt wrote: post #41
empath75 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is going to be 20 times worse than the worst flu seasons.

I don't see how that can be the case. Here's the data from DC on the Flu https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html Over the past decade a low season of 140,000 hospitalizations to a high of 810,000. For this to be 20x worse you'd need each stay from the flu to be 1 day and each for COVID-19 to be 20, and then we'd need to reach somewhere between 700,000 - 4,000,000 positive COVID-19 cases in the U.S. und…

Well according to Cuomo’s March 26 briefing the ventilator situation maybe nearly that bad. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-26/n-y-death... 3-4 days for non-covid versus 11-21 days for covid.

Re: Warren Buffett has the cash to buy Tesla, Starbucks, or McDonald's

#49

Post by bretpiatt »

bloomer wrote: post #48
bretpiatt wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that can be the case. Here's the data from DC on the Flu https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html Over the past decade a low season of 140,000 hospitalizations to a high of 810,000. For this to be 20x worse you'd need each stay from the flu to be 1 day and each for COVID-19 to be 20, and then we'd need to reach somewhere between 700,000 - 4,000,000 positive COVID-19 cases in the U.S. und…

Well according to Cuomo’s March 26 briefing the ventilator situation maybe nearly that bad. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-26/n-y-death... 3-4 days for non-covid versus 11-21 days for covid.

Yeah, it's certainly more prolonged though even the extreme on that range is a 7x delta.

This would lead needing 2 million to 12 million positive COVID-19 tests with 20% hospitalization rate to get a 20x outcome versus our flu seasons.

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