5 ms·

The Virus

51 points by rloomba 7y ago

jger15 7y ago
Similar outlook expressed by Naval Ravikant recently as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0bPSseOlMc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0bPSseOlMc&feature=youtu.be
justicezyx 7y ago
How can a investor give advices on impact of a virus that is new?
- haunter 7y ago
  Classic case of Halo effect >the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
- neonate 7y ago
  It's not advice. It's an opinion piece.
  - throwsprtsdy 7y ago
    The piece does contain one bit of advice, "young healthy people should try to avoid getting Covid-19 for as long as possible."
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
all_blue_chucks 7y ago
If too many people get this simultaneously we will overwhelm the healthcare system and this will switch from tragedy to horror. Everyone please do everything you can to avoid catching and spreading this until we have enough testing to track this and respond effectively.
- dnautics 7y ago
  While simple actions o prevent spread are probably not unreasonable (why aren't we doing these every flu season)? I think the scale of horror is grossly misperceived. For example, It's most likely that the scale of death from covid-19 will be at least one, if not two orders of magnitude lower than annual vehicular deaths in the us.
  - charliemil4 7y ago
    For everyone else, this is pegging Covid-19 deaths to ~36,000 [0] (was curious) [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
    - Thorrez 7y ago
      More like 360-3600 (dnautics said 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than vehicle deaths).
      - randallsquared 7y ago
        ...and there are 3500 recorded deaths so far from COVID-19, so we've very likely already exceeded this estimate as of March 7, 2020.
        Thorrez 7y ago
        I think dnautics was just talking about the US, so there are only 19 deaths so far.
        mstolpm 7y ago
        Please don't mix national and worldwide numbers: WHO estimates 1,350,000 traffic related death worldwide [1]. That said, every single loss of life is a tragedy by itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
TaupeRanger 7y ago
Is this a contest for how to convey the least amount of useful information in the space of 1 blog post? Why even waste the time? Just say "it's probably bad" and move on. I'm willing to bet you have little to no idea what cascading effects are impacting treasury yields. It's just a finance news talking point.
xorfish 7y ago
There are quite a few universal vaccines in the works. The window for a truly horrific pandemic is closing. https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/ending-pandemic-threat-grand-challenge-universal-influenza-vaccine-development https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/ending-pandemic-t...
- ashildr 7y ago
  So this is the plausible worst case - unfortunately I see no reason why it should happen differently if we don‘t manage to keep R0 way lower for a while than it currently seems. It‘s growing exponentially, so one week we‘ll still have a working healthcare system, the next week it will be overwhelmed by the low percentage of people needing O2 or breathing support for a few weeks. We‘ll improvise and then there will be next week with a double number of cases. And a further diminished number of healthy people working in health care. Then our healthcare system will just collapse and those people will die that would otherwise have recovered after a few weeks. It‘s a combination of exponential growth of infections and accumulating numbers of people who need treatment for a while. As I understand this about is the current situation in Iran, it just happened earlier there. We‘ll try a lot, maybe find a way of better treatment to mitigate this a little. This will happen until mid april, next year we‘ll have a vaccine, maybe. Oh, and this is what I fear for my country. We have public healthcare without copay, you can’t be layed off for being sick and if you’re sick (or quarantined) you’ll still be payed. This is going to be a wild, depressing ride and it will come ‚suddenly‘.
remote_phone 7y ago
I don’t think global traffic will decrease after this. It will keep on increasing after this downturn. To suggest people won’t travel unnecessarily is absurd as saying people won’t go out to restaurants post-covid-19. But restaurants will definitely get rocked by this. The question is how will supply chains change. Will Apple really stick all their eggs on China again or will they change strategies. It probably depends on how much it costs them, ie its easier to keep everything in China and pay downtime costs when a new virus hits. Luckily Tim Cook is an expert in supply chains so he is perfectly positioned for this. Other companies probably aren’t and a few will make the wrong decision.
tristanj 7y ago
> hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19 I find that a severe underestimate. Barring a miracle medical cure, given the death rates we've seen so far the number of deaths will be in the tens of millions. It's not hard to estimate the number of deaths with a spreadsheet https://i.imgur.com/e86IcaK.png https://i.imgur.com/e86IcaK.png
- lottin 7y ago
  A high fatality rate skewed towards the old could end the pension crisis.
patrickaljord 7y ago
> I expect society will shift to a new normal pretty fast. Some of these elements—e.g., much less business travel, much less handshaking, much more handwashing—I expect to just stick. Some others—e.g., people working from home all of the time—I expect to not stick. Why would people working from home not stick? Of all the enumerated changes, this one seems like the most likely to stick. At least for any worker that has no direct contact with clients needed, going to an office seems to be not that useful and a waste. As a remote worker myself for more than 10 years, I don't really see his point here. Anyone?
- detaro 7y ago
  > Why would people working from home not stick? The assumption behind it sticking seems to be that WFH is so obviously better if you just try it you'll be convinced. While I think there's some truth to that (=people objecting to it without actual experience), many companies are going to jump into large-scale WFH badly prepared now, so it could pan out either way. Turning a company remote is a culture shift.
ronyfadel 7y ago
> Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19. Even if it’s Sam Altman writing this, I wish he were more scientific instead of appealing to an anonymous authority.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
celerrimus 7y ago
Nonsense, classic FUD
MarkMc 7y ago
A few things to consider: - What is the chance that we develop an effective vaccine in say 6 months? In 18 months? (I'd love to see this question tackled by the Good Judgement project [1]) - Singapore appears to be doing a good job of controlling the spread of the virus. Perhaps they will soon require all travellers to provide documentation of a negative covid19 test result before entry to Singapore? - How many fewer flu deaths will result from changes to travel and hygiene? [1] https://goodjudgment.com/ https://goodjudgment.com/

51 points by rloomba 7y ago

Similar outlook expressed by Naval Ravikant recently as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0bPSseOlMc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0bPSseOlMc&feature=youtu.be

justicezyx 7y ago

How can a investor give advices on impact of a virus that is new?

haunter 7y ago
Classic case of Halo effect >the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
neonate 7y ago
It's not advice. It's an opinion piece.
- throwsprtsdy 7y ago
  The piece does contain one bit of advice, "young healthy people should try to avoid getting Covid-19 for as long as possible."
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

all_blue_chucks 7y ago

If too many people get this simultaneously we will overwhelm the healthcare system and this will switch from tragedy to horror. Everyone please do everything you can to avoid catching and spreading this until we have enough testing to track this and respond effectively.

dnautics 7y ago
While simple actions o prevent spread are probably not unreasonable (why aren't we doing these every flu season)? I think the scale of horror is grossly misperceived. For example, It's most likely that the scale of death from covid-19 will be at least one, if not two orders of magnitude lower than annual vehicular deaths in the us.
- charliemil4 7y ago
  For everyone else, this is pegging Covid-19 deaths to ~36,000 [0] (was curious) [0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    More like 360-3600 (dnautics said 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than vehicle deaths).
    - randallsquared 7y ago
      ...and there are 3500 recorded deaths so far from COVID-19, so we've very likely already exceeded this estimate as of March 7, 2020.
      - Thorrez 7y ago
        I think dnautics was just talking about the US, so there are only 19 deaths so far.
      - mstolpm 7y ago
        Please don't mix national and worldwide numbers: WHO estimates 1,350,000 traffic related death worldwide [1]. That said, every single loss of life is a tragedy by itself. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

TaupeRanger 7y ago

Is this a contest for how to convey the least amount of useful information in the space of 1 blog post? Why even waste the time? Just say "it's probably bad" and move on. I'm willing to bet you have little to no idea what cascading effects are impacting treasury yields. It's just a finance news talking point.

xorfish 7y ago

There are quite a few universal vaccines in the works. The window for a truly horrific pandemic is closing. https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/ending-pandemic-threat-grand-challenge-universal-influenza-vaccine-development https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/ending-pandemic-t...

ashildr 7y ago
So this is the plausible worst case - unfortunately I see no reason why it should happen differently if we don‘t manage to keep R0 way lower for a while than it currently seems. It‘s growing exponentially, so one week we‘ll still have a working healthcare system, the next week it will be overwhelmed by the low percentage of people needing O2 or breathing support for a few weeks. We‘ll improvise and then there will be next week with a double number of cases. And a further diminished number of healthy people working in health care. Then our healthcare system will just collapse and those people will die that would otherwise have recovered after a few weeks. It‘s a combination of exponential growth of infections and accumulating numbers of people who need treatment for a while. As I understand this about is the current situation in Iran, it just happened earlier there. We‘ll try a lot, maybe find a way of better treatment to mitigate this a little. This will happen until mid april, next year we‘ll have a vaccine, maybe. Oh, and this is what I fear for my country. We have public healthcare without copay, you can’t be layed off for being sick and if you’re sick (or quarantined) you’ll still be payed. This is going to be a wild, depressing ride and it will come ‚suddenly‘.

remote_phone 7y ago

I don’t think global traffic will decrease after this. It will keep on increasing after this downturn. To suggest people won’t travel unnecessarily is absurd as saying people won’t go out to restaurants post-covid-19. But restaurants will definitely get rocked by this. The question is how will supply chains change. Will Apple really stick all their eggs on China again or will they change strategies. It probably depends on how much it costs them, ie its easier to keep everything in China and pay downtime costs when a new virus hits. Luckily Tim Cook is an expert in supply chains so he is perfectly positioned for this. Other companies probably aren’t and a few will make the wrong decision.

tristanj 7y ago

> hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19 I find that a severe underestimate. Barring a miracle medical cure, given the death rates we've seen so far the number of deaths will be in the tens of millions. It's not hard to estimate the number of deaths with a spreadsheet https://i.imgur.com/e86IcaK.png https://i.imgur.com/e86IcaK.png

lottin 7y ago
A high fatality rate skewed towards the old could end the pension crisis.

patrickaljord 7y ago

> I expect society will shift to a new normal pretty fast. Some of these elements—e.g., much less business travel, much less handshaking, much more handwashing—I expect to just stick. Some others—e.g., people working from home all of the time—I expect to not stick. Why would people working from home not stick? Of all the enumerated changes, this one seems like the most likely to stick. At least for any worker that has no direct contact with clients needed, going to an office seems to be not that useful and a waste. As a remote worker myself for more than 10 years, I don't really see his point here. Anyone?

detaro 7y ago
> Why would people working from home not stick? The assumption behind it sticking seems to be that WFH is so obviously better if you just try it you'll be convinced. While I think there's some truth to that (=people objecting to it without actual experience), many companies are going to jump into large-scale WFH badly prepared now, so it could pan out either way. Turning a company remote is a culture shift.

ronyfadel 7y ago

> Although I still hope things will go differently, the experts I’ve spoken to think we are likely to face a global tragedy—hundreds of thousands of deaths from Covid-19. Even if it’s Sam Altman writing this, I wish he were more scientific instead of appealing to an anonymous authority.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

celerrimus 7y ago

Nonsense, classic FUD

MarkMc 7y ago

A few things to consider: - What is the chance that we develop an effective vaccine in say 6 months? In 18 months? (I'd love to see this question tackled by the Good Judgement project [1]) - Singapore appears to be doing a good job of controlling the spread of the virus. Perhaps they will soon require all travellers to provide documentation of a negative covid19 test result before entry to Singapore? - How many fewer flu deaths will result from changes to travel and hygiene? [1] https://goodjudgment.com/ https://goodjudgment.com/