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 finally hits California? Mount Rainier erupts? The Yellowstone Caldera?
The markets are being, and will continue to be, affected by these sorts of market players getting squeezed and forced to make market moves because of cash-flow issues rather than because of thoughtful fundamental analysis.
So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
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 attention, ~5% are critical, and ~2% are fatal).
People prefer to believe that media coverage of the effects in China are fearmongering or even a political "hoax"[1], that it will peter out with warmer weather (it's spread quite quickly in Singapore which is hot and humid at the moment), and that because it's possible to misuse masks and because they don't provide complete protection by themselves they're useless and should be left for healthcare workers[2].
The kind of critical thinking that helps you prepare for things like this seems to be in short supply. Last week people thought I was silly for stocking up on dried goods and essentials, this week every store around me is sold out of hand sanitizer, clorox wipes, and isopropanol.
[0]: Wikipedia, right now
[1]: The US president, at a rally a couple of days ago
[2]: The US surgeon general's twitter page, a couple of days ago
We have a total of 2263 currently infected people of which
1000 with few symptoms, 1034 hospitalized and another 229 under emergency treatments [0]
If the number of infected keeps growing (+400 today) and the percentage of hospitalized remains the same, hospitals will have serious problems very soon
The virus is certainly quite concerning, but those numbers are misleading. Italy almost certainly has far more than 2263 infected cases of covid-19. 2263 is just the number of individuals that sought medical attention, were given the test, and tested positive.
The big unknown is how many of those that are infected do not even seek medical attention (or were not administered the test). For instance, children appear to show either mild or no symptoms when infected.
Additionaly, speaking for myself, if I came down with something, with mild flu like symptoms, I wouldn't really be going to the hospital. I'd just take some over the counter medicine and power through. I would only seek medical attention if symptoms became severe. It stands to reason that this is how most people would be expected to behave. Therefore, people with severe symptoms would be much more likely to get medical attention, and therefore be tested, and to be hospitalized, or require emergency treatments.. making the stats look a lot worse than they are.
2263 is just the number of individuals that sought medical attention, were given the test, and tested positive.
My understanding was until recently Italy was testing people that were asymptomatic but since that got them in trouble by making their situation look worse than other countries they have brought their behavior in line with these other countries.
Don't they test close contacts of cases? So even if not all of the cases are severe, the severe cases will discover a lot of the more mild cases by proxy.
But I guess the incubation period is so long that those more mild cases may resolve before they can be tested.
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 don't know who's sick and who isn't! The only way to ensure all the sick people are wearing masks is to get everyone wearing masks. But perhaps it isn't possible to ramp up production fast enough to make this realistic?
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..
Masks are dangerous if worn improperly. They can create a warm moist environment on your face that promotes microbial growth. Also, the mask itself can get infected. Disposable masks aren't built to he reused and cleaned, so you can end up transferring the infection around on your mask if you reuse a disposable. Finally, the idea that masks reduce touching your face might be false, it's possible something itchy and irritating like a mask caused people to touch their faces 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.
You have it backwards. Droplets on surfaces are the primary transmission mechanism. The virus can survive on surfaces for hours. People then touch surfaces with their hands then touch their faces.
Droplets in the air are a transmission mechanism but only for short range (3-6 feet) and only a danger from people who cough or sneeze on you. Respirators are effective at stopping that transmission but they are most useful for people treating the sick. But they aren't effective if worn improperly. For most people, avoiding the sick is enough.
Surgical masks are useful for the sick to keep cough and sneeze droplets from spreading. They are also useful to keep people from touching their face.
The last one - Aerosol transmission - really adds to why this virus is so infectious.
Unlike balistic droplets, an aerosol plume can stay in a room for a very long time after someone coughs or sneezes. An aerosol plume can stay in the air long after someone flushes fecal matter down a toilet.
As a comparison aerosol transmission is what makes tuberculosis and measle so challenging in terms of containment and infection rate.
Thanks for this perspective, but this conflicts with other info I'm seeing. It's hard to know what to believe--do you have any good sources supporting this?
"The new coronavirus spreads mostly through person-to-person contact within about a 6-foot (1.8 meters) radius, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People with COVID-19, which is the disease caused by the coronavirus, spread viral particles through coughing and sneezing. The particles can land in the mouths or noses of those nearby.
It might also be possible to catch SARS-CoV-2 by touching a surface where the virus has recently landed and then touching one's mouth, nose or eyes, but CDC officials believe this method of transmission is less common."
The kind of critical thinking that helps you prepare for things like this seems to be in short supply. Last week people thought I was silly for stocking up on dried goods and essentials, this week every store around me is sold out of hand sanitizer, clorox wipes, and isopropanol.
It is still silly to stock up things you will most probably not need, and if you do, can still get if people like you would not unnecessarily stock up on them.
However his rhetorical style is to put emotionally laden words in close conjunction and then repeat them over and over again. People therefore walk away with an emotional message that does not necessarily logically follow from any facts that they were given.
At an emotional level, he is associating COVID-19, Democrats and hoax. With the message that everything that Democrats say is a hoax, including what they say about COVID-19.
Did you read the article you linked? He inferred that the media coverage is fearmongering and an attempt to hurt him. He specifically used the word hoax. He didn't call the virus a hoax, he called the coverage and criticism of the US's handling and response to the outbreak a hoax.
From the page you linked:
"During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." During the speech he also seemed to downplay the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu."
A transcript of his exact words at the rally:
"Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax."
I never said he called the virus itself a hoax. He calls _reporting on COVID-19 and criticism of the US response_ a hoax intended to discredit him, and that is backed up by the quotes from the snopes article the other commenter linked.
Yeah, agreed, the parent phrasing definitely confused me. First 3 sentences make it seem like he is trying to head-on rebut the comment he is replying to, and then the last sentences of the 1st paragraph just reiterate and expand on what the grandparent comment said and agree with it. While what the parent said makes sense, reading it definitely threw me off a bit.
But katmannthree didn't say "Trump called COVID-19 a hoax". So airstrike is arguing a strawman and katmannthree is simply reiterating what he originally said with quotes from the primary sources.
So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
We learned a lot from 2008.
This is a different ball game. There is plenty of credit today. This is a supply shock. There are not applicable lessons from a credit crunch to a panic/virus induced supply shortage.
Aren’t there at least applicable lessons for dealing with an economic crisis regardless of the direct causes? Or preventative measures to take during a boom time? Because it sounds like once again irrational exuberance has caught up with us and we’re about to reap the whirlwind of lack of protection.
There are none, because “economic crisis” is too large of a category to have a one-size-fits-all universal solution for dealing with it. Every type of “economic crisis” has its own cure, like a virus in a way. And the kind birthed by 2008 is as far as possible from what we are dealing with right now.
I think this is different than irrational exuberance. Maybe one could look to the 1970's oil embargo for clues on how this will play out. I really do not know. But I do know 2008 is not a good comparison because the circumstances are just so different.
We will not learn from this. The Fed knows they HAVE to keep the market going for 3 reasons: 1) big institutions pressure them to 2) They must keep pensions from tanking, or we have severe issues with retirement rate 3) Most importantly, it is easier to print money forever than to actually create jobs and real growth
Edit: on #2, it is 'cheaper' to print money to prop pensions up than to have millions of retirees eating dog food
I'm in finance as well. The regulation is overwhelming. i always feel like i'm working on something for external auditors instead of driving value and savings for the company. It is tiresome.
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.
Yes, that is kind of a point. Outside of regulation the learnings manifest themselves in models that better capture tail, correlation, and liquidity risks.
So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
I am busy, right now I am trying to learn that humans will never learn from history. I vaguely remember somebody mentioning that to me in the past, but I dismissed it as a nonsense.
(But I am not really that pessimistic. Somebody mentioned that the Spanish flu was a big impulse for providing national health care services. I think it can have a similar effect, somewhere.)
They have learned: privatize gains, socialize losses. The government is so fearful of meaningful corrections they will do whatever is necessary to make the people at the top whole instead of letting them suffer catastrophic losses. So party on.
There are ways to go about this and wipe out investors without causing complete economic collapse (e.g. nationalization and orderly dismantling) but "we've" already decided not to go that route.
right now I am trying to learn that humans will never learn from history. I vaguely remember somebody mentioning that to me in the past, but I dismissed it as a nonsense.
Perhaps it was in reference to the famous Aldous Huxley quote:
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
Propagandists and similar types learn the lessons of history excellently. They work to prevent others from learning anything, but their work is not hard: People not only adopt the characteristic customs and conventions of whatever communit(ies) they identify with, they actively seek groups to identify with.
Argument by "they said" should really only be used when it is the same "they" speaking now and then. Otherwise, especially when no reference is given, the "they" can be no one, a general sense the writer remembers, a low-quality they (talking points for manipulation purposes), etc.
Mainly, "they" are of no significance, no matter what "they" say. The information is what matters, not the "they". If information cannot be extracted from their statements (source references / description of logical statement / premise / etc) , there is no data to analyze.
Comments
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 finally hits California? Mount Rainier erupts? The Yellowstone Caldera?
So it sounds like we didn’t learn much from 2008. Will we learn from 2020?
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 attention, ~5% are critical, and ~2% are fatal).
People prefer to believe that media coverage of the effects in China are fearmongering or even a political "hoax"[1], that it will peter out with warmer weather (it's spread quite quickly in Singapore which is hot and humid at the moment), and that because it's possible to misuse masks and because they don't provide complete protection by themselves they're useless and should be left for healthcare workers[2].
The kind of critical thinking that helps you prepare for things like this seems to be in short supply. Last week people thought I was silly for stocking up on dried goods and essentials, this week every store around me is sold out of hand sanitizer, clorox wipes, and isopropanol.
[0]: Wikipedia, right now
[1]: The US president, at a rally a couple of days ago
[2]: The US surgeon general's twitter page, a couple of days ago
In Italy at the moment the data is far worse.
We have a total of 2263 currently infected people of which 1000 with few symptoms, 1034 hospitalized and another 229 under emergency treatments [0]
If the number of infected keeps growing (+400 today) and the percentage of hospitalized remains the same, hospitals will have serious problems very soon
[0] https://www.ansa.it/sito/notizie/cronaca/2020/03/03/coronavi...
The virus is certainly quite concerning, but those numbers are misleading. Italy almost certainly has far more than 2263 infected cases of covid-19. 2263 is just the number of individuals that sought medical attention, were given the test, and tested positive.
The big unknown is how many of those that are infected do not even seek medical attention (or were not administered the test). For instance, children appear to show either mild or no symptoms when infected.
Additionaly, speaking for myself, if I came down with something, with mild flu like symptoms, I wouldn't really be going to the hospital. I'd just take some over the counter medicine and power through. I would only seek medical attention if symptoms became severe. It stands to reason that this is how most people would be expected to behave. Therefore, people with severe symptoms would be much more likely to get medical attention, and therefore be tested, and to be hospitalized, or require emergency treatments.. making the stats look a lot worse than they are.
My understanding was until recently Italy was testing people that were asymptomatic but since that got them in trouble by making their situation look worse than other countries they have brought their behavior in line with these other countries.
Don't they test close contacts of cases? So even if not all of the cases are severe, the severe cases will discover a lot of the more mild cases by proxy.
But I guess the incubation period is so long that those more mild cases may resolve before they can be tested.
Italy has been running a lot of tests. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/
I think that includes many tests on people who were simply exposed to it somehow, in order to try and stop the spread.
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 don't know who's sick and who isn't! The only way to ensure all the sick people are wearing masks is to get everyone wearing masks. But perhaps it isn't possible to ramp up production fast enough to make this realistic?
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..
There aren't enough to go around, and they need to be changed after something like 2 hours - or is it 4?
It's easier to just keep people isolated, I guess.
Masks are dangerous if worn improperly. They can create a warm moist environment on your face that promotes microbial growth. Also, the mask itself can get infected. Disposable masks aren't built to he reused and cleaned, so you can end up transferring the infection around on your mask if you reuse a disposable. Finally, the idea that masks reduce touching your face might be false, it's possible something itchy and irritating like a mask caused people to touch their faces more.
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.
You have it backwards. Droplets on surfaces are the primary transmission mechanism. The virus can survive on surfaces for hours. People then touch surfaces with their hands then touch their faces.
Droplets in the air are a transmission mechanism but only for short range (3-6 feet) and only a danger from people who cough or sneeze on you. Respirators are effective at stopping that transmission but they are most useful for people treating the sick. But they aren't effective if worn improperly. For most people, avoiding the sick is enough.
Surgical masks are useful for the sick to keep cough and sneeze droplets from spreading. They are also useful to keep people from touching their face.
Just for completion.
The current understanding is that the transmission mechanisms for Covid-19 are:
1. Contact 2. Droplets (particles > 20 microns), AND 3. Aerosol (particles < 5/10 microns)
The last one - Aerosol transmission - really adds to why this virus is so infectious.
Unlike balistic droplets, an aerosol plume can stay in a room for a very long time after someone coughs or sneezes. An aerosol plume can stay in the air long after someone flushes fecal matter down a toilet.
As a comparison aerosol transmission is what makes tuberculosis and measle so challenging in terms of containment and infection rate.
Thanks for this perspective, but this conflicts with other info I'm seeing. It's hard to know what to believe--do you have any good sources supporting this?
For example, a quick google of "how does coronavirus spread" brings up this article as the top result: https://www.livescience.com/how-coronavirus-spreads.html
It says:
"The new coronavirus spreads mostly through person-to-person contact within about a 6-foot (1.8 meters) radius, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). People with COVID-19, which is the disease caused by the coronavirus, spread viral particles through coughing and sneezing. The particles can land in the mouths or noses of those nearby.
It might also be possible to catch SARS-CoV-2 by touching a surface where the virus has recently landed and then touching one's mouth, nose or eyes, but CDC officials believe this method of transmission is less common."
Even a non-surgical or home-made mask is better than no mask at all.
It is still silly to stock up things you will most probably not need, and if you do, can still get if people like you would not unnecessarily stock up on them.
Trump did not call COVID-19 a hoax.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-coronavirus-rally-re...
He did not.
However his rhetorical style is to put emotionally laden words in close conjunction and then repeat them over and over again. People therefore walk away with an emotional message that does not necessarily logically follow from any facts that they were given.
At an emotional level, he is associating COVID-19, Democrats and hoax. With the message that everything that Democrats say is a hoax, including what they say about COVID-19.
Did you read the article you linked? He inferred that the media coverage is fearmongering and an attempt to hurt him. He specifically used the word hoax. He didn't call the virus a hoax, he called the coverage and criticism of the US's handling and response to the outbreak a hoax.
From the page you linked: "During a Feb. 28, 2020, campaign rally in South Carolina, President Donald Trump likened the Democrats' criticism of his administration's response to the new coronavirus outbreak to their efforts to impeach him, saying "this is their new hoax." During the speech he also seemed to downplay the severity of the outbreak, comparing it to the common flu."
A transcript of his exact words at the rally: "Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax."
How does this differ from the person you responded to who said, "Trump did not call COVID-19 a hoax"?
I never said he called the virus itself a hoax. He calls _reporting on COVID-19 and criticism of the US response_ a hoax intended to discredit him, and that is backed up by the quotes from the snopes article the other commenter linked.
Yeah, agreed, the parent phrasing definitely confused me. First 3 sentences make it seem like he is trying to head-on rebut the comment he is replying to, and then the last sentences of the 1st paragraph just reiterate and expand on what the grandparent comment said and agree with it. While what the parent said makes sense, reading it definitely threw me off a bit.
But katmannthree didn't say "Trump called COVID-19 a hoax". So airstrike is arguing a strawman and katmannthree is simply reiterating what he originally said with quotes from the primary sources.
If he doesn't want people misinterpreting his statements and spreading fake news, he should stop spreading fake news himself first.
We learned a lot from 2008.
This is a different ball game. There is plenty of credit today. This is a supply shock. There are not applicable lessons from a credit crunch to a panic/virus induced supply shortage.
It’s possibly about to be a demand shortage soon as well.
Aren’t there at least applicable lessons for dealing with an economic crisis regardless of the direct causes? Or preventative measures to take during a boom time? Because it sounds like once again irrational exuberance has caught up with us and we’re about to reap the whirlwind of lack of protection.
There are none, because “economic crisis” is too large of a category to have a one-size-fits-all universal solution for dealing with it. Every type of “economic crisis” has its own cure, like a virus in a way. And the kind birthed by 2008 is as far as possible from what we are dealing with right now.
I think this is different than irrational exuberance. Maybe one could look to the 1970's oil embargo for clues on how this will play out. I really do not know. But I do know 2008 is not a good comparison because the circumstances are just so different.
We will not learn from this. The Fed knows they HAVE to keep the market going for 3 reasons: 1) big institutions pressure them to 2) They must keep pensions from tanking, or we have severe issues with retirement rate 3) Most importantly, it is easier to print money forever than to actually create jobs and real growth
Edit: on #2, it is 'cheaper' to print money to prop pensions up than to have millions of retirees eating dog food
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.
I'm in finance as well. The regulation is overwhelming. i always feel like i'm working on something for external auditors instead of driving value and savings for the company. It is tiresome.
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.
Yes, that is kind of a point. Outside of regulation the learnings manifest themselves in models that better capture tail, correlation, and liquidity risks.
I am busy, right now I am trying to learn that humans will never learn from history. I vaguely remember somebody mentioning that to me in the past, but I dismissed it as a nonsense.
(But I am not really that pessimistic. Somebody mentioned that the Spanish flu was a big impulse for providing national health care services. I think it can have a similar effect, somewhere.)
They have learned: privatize gains, socialize losses. The government is so fearful of meaningful corrections they will do whatever is necessary to make the people at the top whole instead of letting them suffer catastrophic losses. So party on.
There are ways to go about this and wipe out investors without causing complete economic collapse (e.g. nationalization and orderly dismantling) but "we've" already decided not to go that route.
Perhaps it was in reference to the famous Aldous Huxley quote:
“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.”
Propagandists and similar types learn the lessons of history excellently. They work to prevent others from learning anything, but their work is not hard: People not only adopt the characteristic customs and conventions of whatever communit(ies) they identify with, they actively seek groups to identify with.
I think the analogous effect this time is to revisit the healthcare supply chain
The cynic in me believes this was ensure there was a ready supply of healthy men for war fighting.
Now that wars are mechanized and we have nuclear weapons this is less of an impetus.
There might be a different effect here as preditary health care in the US is unpalatable in the best of times.
Argument by "they said" should really only be used when it is the same "they" speaking now and then. Otherwise, especially when no reference is given, the "they" can be no one, a general sense the writer remembers, a low-quality they (talking points for manipulation purposes), etc.
Funnily enough, I asked about this two years ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16315334
Mainly, "they" are of no significance, no matter what "they" say. The information is what matters, not the "they". If information cannot be extracted from their statements (source references / description of logical statement / premise / etc) , there is no data to analyze.
He used to say that 2008 was the end of the big long term debt cycle. Now he's saying it hasn't happened yet.