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I see only doom & gloom comments here. Did people miss this positive note: "On Thursday, China said it had just 15 new coronavirus cases and 11 deaths over the

I see only doom & gloom comments here. Did people miss this positive note: "On Thursday, China said it had just 15 new coronavirus cases and 11 deaths over the previous day." See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/coronavirus-news.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/world/coronavirus-news.ht... China has controlled the problem. By taking drastic measures the rest of the world will too. In a couple of months the virus will be under control. The stock market will not recover as quickly as it crashed, but it will recover! How do I know that? Because crashes have happened in the past, and the world didn't collapse and disappear. A single company can collapse and disappear but not the entire stock market. The only question is, how long will it take to recover. I think it will take 2 to 3 years. People who sold during the financial crisis of 2008 did not get to participate in the recovery that followed. There isn't an email or a notification that goes out when the market starts to recover. Attempting to time the market is futile. Staying out of the market will only mean that you will miss out on the largest portion of the recovery.

kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
And what if China is wrong, lying, or only temporarily correct, causing the virus to resurface when society resumes?
- singularity2001 7y ago
  Then there are still some drugs in the pipeline which are proofen to be safe + helpful and only need official approval (if you trust China on that).
- helen___keller 7y ago
  > only temporarily correct FWIW this is not uncommon with pandemics. For example, WHO[0] says "During the post-peak period, pandemic disease levels in most countries with adequate surveillance will have dropped below peak observed levels. The post-peak period signifies that pandemic activity appears to be decreasing; however, it is uncertain if additional waves will occur and countries will need to be prepared for a second wave." For example, during the spanish flu, the second wave was far deadlier than the first. But there were additional factors (WWI and a mutation that made it more dangerous to the young). This can continue until enough of the population has been infected that we have herd immunity. This is why there's long-term estimates of 20-60% of population being infected[1][2] [0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseases/influenza/data-and-statistics/pandemic-influenza/about-pandemic-phases http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseas... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/world/europe/coronavirus-merkel-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/world/europe/coronavirus-... [2] https://www.axios.com/congressional-physician-predicts-75-150-million-us-coronavirus-cases-fec69e77-1515-4fbc-8340-c53b65c22c53.html https://www.axios.com/congressional-physician-predicts-75-15...
  - kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
    So here’s my question. China seems to have done a good job locking down Beijing and preventing an outbreak there. They did not do a good job in Wuhan. Per what you have described above, doesn’t it seem probable that Beijing will see a resurfacing given that relatively few people were exposed to it in the first bout?
    - helen___keller 7y ago
      Seems likely to me personally but only time will tell. In any case it probably won't be until after the initial panic & quarantine, when regular flights and travel and economic activity resume
- nobody0 7y ago
  Nobody knows if the virus will resurface or not, but China has no motivation to lie and just let people to have the disease since it's very costy to cure people. However, China is motivated to resume society of other cities otherwise more people will get into economical troubles and it spirals.
  - aussiegreenie 7y ago
    >but China has no motivation to lie You do not know much about China, do you? President Xi's job (and possible life) is on the line if he fails. The CCP MUST be seen as perfect and Uncle Xi will ensure it is perfect by lying to anyone and everyone.
    - rfoo 7y ago
      Genuine question, how does "lying to everyone" cure people?
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  They’re not lying. I live in Shanghai. Things are kind of going back to normal. The rumor mill says schools may open up again in April. If the coronavirus wasn’t under control it would be impossible to hide. Without public health measures it has a doubling time of four to five days. The health system here would be overwhelmed and it would be obvious to all that it was. I’m not saying the numbers the CPC are publishing are entirely accurate but the trend in cases definitely is. Given strong enough public health measures this can be brought under control. It’s now in over a hundred countries so there will be further outbreaks but with sufficient measures we can limit the deaths until a vaccine is developed.
  - kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
    What’s been going on in Shanghai? How serious has the lockdown been?
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  This is likely going to happen; right now things are shutting down, people are paying more attention to personal hygiene, etc. But once this settles down again, people will go back to their old habits. Come fall, it'll probably rise again fast.
cik 7y ago
It's hard to take anything China says as the truth. If there's anything we ought have learned over the decades of lies coming from Chinese Leadership (and generally state controlled messaging) is that at the very least, that's not the whole truth.
- nobody0 7y ago
  If they had to lie, they won't release 80,000 cases. It is coming to an end for them. There is very little point in covering anything now. I wish the U.S. would test more people like South Korea did.
  - cik 7y ago
    Everyone lies - it's just a question of degrees. This isn't unique to China.
  - smallgovt 7y ago
    It makes China look better on the global stage if they do a better job containing the virus than democratic nations. I wouldn't call that a little point.
    - myopenid 7y ago
      What's wrong with that?
      - smallgovt 7y ago
        Fundamentally? Maybe nothing. I was responding to the parent comment which claimed there's no real reason for China to under-report numbers.
m3kw9 7y ago
Is a complete lock down, that isn’t a win. People are stuck at home so they cannot get infected. Think about it
- petilon 7y ago
  The virus cannot survive permanently without hosts (human or animal). People are stuck at home until everyone (that's still alive) is clear. Then everyone can come out. Edit: s/hosts/human or animal hosts/
  - gpm 7y ago
    > human hosts We think it came from some form of animal, and I've seen a report of a low level infection in a dog. Edit: While I think the former is common knowledge, here is a source for the latter: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-dog-spread-humans-1.5487621 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-dog-spread-humans...
  - m3kw9 7y ago
    Not practical when you do it for a year. And don’t forget the world around you, you gonna miss cases when someone flys in? Or are you gonna block all borders? The question is how long you gonna let economy suffer. Die by virus or die by economic disaster
  - ouid 7y ago
    the lancet published that the amount of time you remain infectious after infected is usually 20 days, but can go as high as 40 days. I don't think you understand what you are proposing.
  - sumofi 7y ago
    I did not hear anything that it is not possible for a human to spread it while not being affected by it. At least for influenza that's partially the case and going around the globe.
crucialfelix 7y ago
I think the big gloom right now is that Trump has revealed that the US is not capable of a China or South Korea style response. Those countries were very well prepared because of SARS. South Korea is sharing everything they can on how they've handled their response: https://twitter.com/HannahNamMD/status/1237618159840100353 https://twitter.com/HannahNamMD/status/1237618159840100353
thewarrior 7y ago
So you're saying that a total shut down of the economy which could cause a depression is whats needed to deal with this virus. And thats no reason to be worried ? A lot of people are staring at economic ruin. We are staring at potentially multiple quarters of negative GDP growth. I don't think this has happened for a long time. And money printing won't fix it like it usually does.
- JeremyNT 7y ago
  > So you're saying that a total shut down of the economy which could cause a depression is whats needed to deal with this virus. And thats no reason to be worried ? Yeah. China covered this up at first, but it responded dramatically and authoritatively once the threat was understood. Being an authoritarian state, their power structures allow them to effectively restrict movement and manage the entire economy to limit the spread, and where they sit now is very nearly a best case scenario for what a response could look like barring that initial delay. And yet, even so, it will still result in countless second/third/nth order effects that will cause devastating public health and financial ramifications (the extent of which will only be slowly realized over time). In comparison, the US is incredibly poorly situated. This country is a mishmash of loosely coupled quazi-independent governments, and its public health apparatus is mostly just de-facto run by the "invisible hand" of the market. The Federal Government has no ability to respond in the way China did, even assuming the people in control of it understood the potential severity here (which as yet they have not.)
  - mattrp 7y ago
    I’m perfectly fine with our mishmash. The US has a strong economy, smart people and smart solutions will emerge.
    - discodave 7y ago
      Are you OK if we check back with you in a couple of months?
      - 7y ago
ajross 7y ago
> By taking drastic measures the rest of the world will too. That seems optimistic, given the lack of significant action in the rest of the world so far. Personally I think the more likely scenario is that the world plays whack-a-mole with citywide outbreaks over the coming year and a half until a vaccine is available. No, that's not an apocalypse, but I wouldn't put money down on this being over by the summer.
saberience 7y ago
China's numbers make no sense at all. A country with 1.4B people and they at one point had 80k people with the coronavirus in the country which includes many big cities, smaller cities, and towns. Somehow they only have 15 new cases in the whole country? How does that make any sense if you take a moment to really think about it? It's clear they are either deliberately not testing or skewing/hiding their numbers for political purposes. It's a bit similar to India's numbers. India (population 1.3B) has fewer cases than Iceland (Isolated island of 300k people), again, how does this make any sense? It only makes sense if they're not testing people or hiding numbers.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Why, concretely, doesn't that make sense? The CCP deliberately trying to hide things is definitely a possibility that should be considered, but I don't follow why you're saying it's impossible or what they'd hope to gain.
  - saberience 7y ago
    It's obvious what they gain? What does the CCP care about more than anything? They care about their image and the stability of their hold on the people. If China looks like they "fucked it up" then the people become more restless and start questioning the party. Also, they care deeply about their worldwide reputation and that the world sees that their "system" (top down authoritarianism) is seen as more effective than western progressive liberal democracies. It makes them look a hell of a lot better if they can say to their people, "Look guys, look at how well we handled this crisis compared to the Western countries, this is why having an authoritatian one-party state with absolute control is better for you guys!" Looking like the idiot country who totally fucked this up doesn't help the CCP at all, which is why they tried to silence the guy who was originally trying to blow the whistle on this whole thing.
    - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
      But if the virus isn't actually contained, how is lying about it going to help their image or stability? If Beijing hospitals end up stuffed to the brim with pneumonia patients, nobody's going to be fooled by a claim that there are no coronavirus cases.
ouid 7y ago
I mean, if you look out the window and the market hasn't falling 8 percent in a day in over a week, it might be an alright time to buy.
- petilon 7y ago
  No that's too late. You want to buy low and sell high, not the other way around!
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    Depends on how much of a discount you want and how fast the rebound will be. The S&P 500 has now given up 2.5 years of growth. I don't think it will spring within a week of bottoming out
aussiegreenie 7y ago
If you truly believe ANY Chinese data, I have a Great Wall to sell you. China is lying. The "Start-up Party" is over. Startups will need to plan make profits within 3 yrs. There will never be another WeWork or even another Uber. The world is returning to normal. Capital will not be free. People will need to earn it.
xenocyon 7y ago
The reason for the doom and gloom is this weird system we have wherein the strength of the economy is based on human belief in the strength of the economy. Because of this circular relationship, positive feedback events can occur very quickly and result in the material effects of poverty, homelessness, and hunger.
thephyber 7y ago
> but it will recover! How do I know that? Because crashes have happened in the past, and the world didn't collapse and disappear. I’m being facetious with this specific instance, but how would you know? If many worlds had disappeared after catastrophes many times before, we might have no ability to know. This is “survivor bias”, no?
alpineidyll3 7y ago
Anyone who takes the current Chinese numbers seriously is incredibly naive.

kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago

And what if China is wrong, lying, or only temporarily correct, causing the virus to resurface when society resumes?

singularity2001 7y ago
Then there are still some drugs in the pipeline which are proofen to be safe + helpful and only need official approval (if you trust China on that).
helen___keller 7y ago
> only temporarily correct FWIW this is not uncommon with pandemics. For example, WHO[0] says "During the post-peak period, pandemic disease levels in most countries with adequate surveillance will have dropped below peak observed levels. The post-peak period signifies that pandemic activity appears to be decreasing; however, it is uncertain if additional waves will occur and countries will need to be prepared for a second wave." For example, during the spanish flu, the second wave was far deadlier than the first. But there were additional factors (WWI and a mutation that made it more dangerous to the young). This can continue until enough of the population has been infected that we have herd immunity. This is why there's long-term estimates of 20-60% of population being infected[1][2] [0] http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseases/influenza/data-and-statistics/pandemic-influenza/about-pandemic-phases http://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseas... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/world/europe/coronavirus-merkel-germany.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/world/europe/coronavirus-... [2] https://www.axios.com/congressional-physician-predicts-75-150-million-us-coronavirus-cases-fec69e77-1515-4fbc-8340-c53b65c22c53.html https://www.axios.com/congressional-physician-predicts-75-15...
- kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
  So here’s my question. China seems to have done a good job locking down Beijing and preventing an outbreak there. They did not do a good job in Wuhan. Per what you have described above, doesn’t it seem probable that Beijing will see a resurfacing given that relatively few people were exposed to it in the first bout?
  - helen___keller 7y ago
    Seems likely to me personally but only time will tell. In any case it probably won't be until after the initial panic & quarantine, when regular flights and travel and economic activity resume
nobody0 7y ago
Nobody knows if the virus will resurface or not, but China has no motivation to lie and just let people to have the disease since it's very costy to cure people. However, China is motivated to resume society of other cities otherwise more people will get into economical troubles and it spirals.
- aussiegreenie 7y ago
  >but China has no motivation to lie You do not know much about China, do you? President Xi's job (and possible life) is on the line if he fails. The CCP MUST be seen as perfect and Uncle Xi will ensure it is perfect by lying to anyone and everyone.
  - rfoo 7y ago
    Genuine question, how does "lying to everyone" cure people?
barry-cotter 7y ago
They’re not lying. I live in Shanghai. Things are kind of going back to normal. The rumor mill says schools may open up again in April. If the coronavirus wasn’t under control it would be impossible to hide. Without public health measures it has a doubling time of four to five days. The health system here would be overwhelmed and it would be obvious to all that it was. I’m not saying the numbers the CPC are publishing are entirely accurate but the trend in cases definitely is. Given strong enough public health measures this can be brought under control. It’s now in over a hundred countries so there will be further outbreaks but with sufficient measures we can limit the deaths until a vaccine is developed.
- kaiabwpdjqn 7y ago
  What’s been going on in Shanghai? How serious has the lockdown been?
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
This is likely going to happen; right now things are shutting down, people are paying more attention to personal hygiene, etc. But once this settles down again, people will go back to their old habits. Come fall, it'll probably rise again fast.

cik 7y ago

It's hard to take anything China says as the truth. If there's anything we ought have learned over the decades of lies coming from Chinese Leadership (and generally state controlled messaging) is that at the very least, that's not the whole truth.

nobody0 7y ago
If they had to lie, they won't release 80,000 cases. It is coming to an end for them. There is very little point in covering anything now. I wish the U.S. would test more people like South Korea did.
- cik 7y ago
  Everyone lies - it's just a question of degrees. This isn't unique to China.
- smallgovt 7y ago
  It makes China look better on the global stage if they do a better job containing the virus than democratic nations. I wouldn't call that a little point.
  - myopenid 7y ago
    What's wrong with that?
    - smallgovt 7y ago
      Fundamentally? Maybe nothing. I was responding to the parent comment which claimed there's no real reason for China to under-report numbers.

m3kw9 7y ago

Is a complete lock down, that isn’t a win. People are stuck at home so they cannot get infected. Think about it

petilon 7y ago
The virus cannot survive permanently without hosts (human or animal). People are stuck at home until everyone (that's still alive) is clear. Then everyone can come out. Edit: s/hosts/human or animal hosts/
- gpm 7y ago
  > human hosts We think it came from some form of animal, and I've seen a report of a low level infection in a dog. Edit: While I think the former is common knowledge, here is a source for the latter: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-dog-spread-humans-1.5487621 https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-dog-spread-humans...
- m3kw9 7y ago
  Not practical when you do it for a year. And don’t forget the world around you, you gonna miss cases when someone flys in? Or are you gonna block all borders? The question is how long you gonna let economy suffer. Die by virus or die by economic disaster
- ouid 7y ago
  the lancet published that the amount of time you remain infectious after infected is usually 20 days, but can go as high as 40 days. I don't think you understand what you are proposing.
- sumofi 7y ago
  I did not hear anything that it is not possible for a human to spread it while not being affected by it. At least for influenza that's partially the case and going around the globe.

crucialfelix 7y ago

I think the big gloom right now is that Trump has revealed that the US is not capable of a China or South Korea style response. Those countries were very well prepared because of SARS. South Korea is sharing everything they can on how they've handled their response: https://twitter.com/HannahNamMD/status/1237618159840100353 https://twitter.com/HannahNamMD/status/1237618159840100353

thewarrior 7y ago

So you're saying that a total shut down of the economy which could cause a depression is whats needed to deal with this virus. And thats no reason to be worried ? A lot of people are staring at economic ruin. We are staring at potentially multiple quarters of negative GDP growth. I don't think this has happened for a long time. And money printing won't fix it like it usually does.

JeremyNT 7y ago
> So you're saying that a total shut down of the economy which could cause a depression is whats needed to deal with this virus. And thats no reason to be worried ? Yeah. China covered this up at first, but it responded dramatically and authoritatively once the threat was understood. Being an authoritarian state, their power structures allow them to effectively restrict movement and manage the entire economy to limit the spread, and where they sit now is very nearly a best case scenario for what a response could look like barring that initial delay. And yet, even so, it will still result in countless second/third/nth order effects that will cause devastating public health and financial ramifications (the extent of which will only be slowly realized over time). In comparison, the US is incredibly poorly situated. This country is a mishmash of loosely coupled quazi-independent governments, and its public health apparatus is mostly just de-facto run by the "invisible hand" of the market. The Federal Government has no ability to respond in the way China did, even assuming the people in control of it understood the potential severity here (which as yet they have not.)
- mattrp 7y ago
  I’m perfectly fine with our mishmash. The US has a strong economy, smart people and smart solutions will emerge.
  - discodave 7y ago
    Are you OK if we check back with you in a couple of months?
    - 7y ago

ajross 7y ago

> By taking drastic measures the rest of the world will too. That seems optimistic, given the lack of significant action in the rest of the world so far. Personally I think the more likely scenario is that the world plays whack-a-mole with citywide outbreaks over the coming year and a half until a vaccine is available. No, that's not an apocalypse, but I wouldn't put money down on this being over by the summer.

saberience 7y ago

China's numbers make no sense at all. A country with 1.4B people and they at one point had 80k people with the coronavirus in the country which includes many big cities, smaller cities, and towns. Somehow they only have 15 new cases in the whole country? How does that make any sense if you take a moment to really think about it? It's clear they are either deliberately not testing or skewing/hiding their numbers for political purposes. It's a bit similar to India's numbers. India (population 1.3B) has fewer cases than Iceland (Isolated island of 300k people), again, how does this make any sense? It only makes sense if they're not testing people or hiding numbers.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Why, concretely, doesn't that make sense? The CCP deliberately trying to hide things is definitely a possibility that should be considered, but I don't follow why you're saying it's impossible or what they'd hope to gain.
- saberience 7y ago
  It's obvious what they gain? What does the CCP care about more than anything? They care about their image and the stability of their hold on the people. If China looks like they "fucked it up" then the people become more restless and start questioning the party. Also, they care deeply about their worldwide reputation and that the world sees that their "system" (top down authoritarianism) is seen as more effective than western progressive liberal democracies. It makes them look a hell of a lot better if they can say to their people, "Look guys, look at how well we handled this crisis compared to the Western countries, this is why having an authoritatian one-party state with absolute control is better for you guys!" Looking like the idiot country who totally fucked this up doesn't help the CCP at all, which is why they tried to silence the guy who was originally trying to blow the whistle on this whole thing.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    But if the virus isn't actually contained, how is lying about it going to help their image or stability? If Beijing hospitals end up stuffed to the brim with pneumonia patients, nobody's going to be fooled by a claim that there are no coronavirus cases.

ouid 7y ago

I mean, if you look out the window and the market hasn't falling 8 percent in a day in over a week, it might be an alright time to buy.

petilon 7y ago
No that's too late. You want to buy low and sell high, not the other way around!
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  Depends on how much of a discount you want and how fast the rebound will be. The S&P 500 has now given up 2.5 years of growth. I don't think it will spring within a week of bottoming out

aussiegreenie 7y ago

If you truly believe ANY Chinese data, I have a Great Wall to sell you. China is lying. The "Start-up Party" is over. Startups will need to plan make profits within 3 yrs. There will never be another WeWork or even another Uber. The world is returning to normal. Capital will not be free. People will need to earn it.

xenocyon 7y ago

The reason for the doom and gloom is this weird system we have wherein the strength of the economy is based on human belief in the strength of the economy. Because of this circular relationship, positive feedback events can occur very quickly and result in the material effects of poverty, homelessness, and hunger.

thephyber 7y ago

> but it will recover! How do I know that? Because crashes have happened in the past, and the world didn't collapse and disappear. I’m being facetious with this specific instance, but how would you know? If many worlds had disappeared after catastrophes many times before, we might have no ability to know. This is “survivor bias”, no?

alpineidyll3 7y ago

Anyone who takes the current Chinese numbers seriously is incredibly naive.