Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19) and Tinnitus

Geez, I think that's kinda overkill, even in NYC, the world epicenter of coronavirus. I haven't seen anybody with a mask like that. Most people here use a simple cloth mask. Well, I guess more is a lot better than too little. Stay safe.

 

@Stu1983 that looks much better than a cloth mask so I am sure it's much more than sufficient.

Here's the inevitable result of the fact that masks do work and have been heavily policized here:


(Remember, initial outbreaks were all in large cities which skew heavily blue, hence our starting positions)

The blue counties are gonna tick back up as summer tourism opens up more and more, though!

@Juan lots of economists have been predicting a recession cycle sooner than later for a year or two, and The Economist devoted an issue to this last year which among other things explored the ways that some things in the US, during the restructuring following 2008, were set up as a sort of house of cards predicated on continued growth. So, the prediction of The Economist at that time, was that the next recession in the US stood the risk of breaking things hard and fast.

That was without a pandemic triggering unprecedented unemployment claims. Some of that has been papered over by stimulus checks (spent, no doubt) and extra unemployment benefits set to expire soon. That seems to set the stage for historic evictions and homelessness, also during a pandemic. We also have to find a way to have a presidential election at a time when the country is more divided than it's been in at least 50 years, also during a pandemic, and in a situation where no matter what the outcome is it is likely that the losing side will question the legitimacy of it.

If people want to find ways to pollyanna about all this, they certainly can, but from a pragmatic point of view, my personal goal right now is to be turning any illiquid assets liquid, selling off anything that I don't need, and also trying to be better supplied at home than usual in all areas, in case the minor supply chain hiccups we are seeing now are just foreshadowing.

It's dismal to say but I think in a lot of ways the second half of 2020 stands a good chance of being worse than the first half. Stay safe and good luck, everyone!

 

That's a good approach, I think. Real estate prices are going to plummet. There is a real estate bubble in the US, with lots of people accumulating properties worth USD 300.000 each using down payments of maybe 10.000 USD on each property. It is a massive bubble.

 

I agree there's a bubble and prices are going to come down some places -- Silicon Valley is insane and unsustainable. On the other hand, right now, local property prices are stable to rising, as recent events have caused rich idiots in NYC and CT to start buying up extra houses further out in case cities stay Real Bad. If (when) we enter catastrophic recession mode, that may change, but what would worry me most is if prices dipped and this triggered a massive influx of more out-of-state purchases of second and third homes for people. It's "good" in some ways for the local tax base if rich people buy property and actually live here > 50% of the time; it's basically just a net negative for the community if people buy houses and only stay in them 3 weeks a year.

Do you have a source / article / etc about people putting 10K down on multiple 300K properties? Up here you need to put more like 50K down on a 300K place, and banks are very reluctant to do 2nd or 3rd mortgages for rental properties. But, I can believe things are completely out of control other places.

Googling this did lead me to this article: https://thecollegeinvestor.com/17986/how-to-become-a-real-estate-mogul-with-10000/

That article, IMO, should be titled "how to overleverage TF out of yourself and end up holding an empty bag when a pandemic recession causes all your renters to default at once and you don't remotely have the 6-12 months runway you should have"

Cloth masks mostly protect other people from you in the case you're spreading virus, and are far less effective in protecting you from unmasked sick people.

A full face n100 setup is definitely more about protecting yourself, wearing something like that also sends a pretty strong message. If I lived in some terrible place (Tampa?) that has massive spread and culturally toxic views on masks, I would absolutely wear full gear like that while shopping, for my own protection.

Of course, in Florida, if you were gonna wear a mask like that you'd probably also want to carry a f'ing gun openly just to deter idiots from trying to spit at you or whatever. What a great, functional county!

 

That didn't age well.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/us/us-coronavirus-thursday/index.html

 

I read that on US real estate forums about investors who buy 50 properties, 100 properties. Some of these people know what they are doing, although I doubt they took into account all the risks. Other "investors" who anyway own 10 - 20 houses are a lot more inexperienced so I guess they are in for a lot of pain once prices start falling.

 

Well, toilet paper is now pretty well stocked, and presumably masks and ventilators are catching up, and people have already adapted to wearing masks and socially distancing. So I think even if things get better we're far better prepared to weather the storm than before. I just wish lysol spray and wipes were available again. That situation is ridiculous. Meat supplies seem to be holding on better than I thought but there are other things to eat.

 

neither did various things said by various people about Sweden and how they were doing as well / better than other Scandinavian countries which had locked down.



(Sweden's total population isn't even 2x Denmark's)

That's not really what I meant; I believe we haven't remotely begun to see the beginning of the recession we are in (nor COVID; we'll optimistically be nearing 300K deaths by the end of the year, but we could certainly blow through that).

Mass evictions so far have been held back by a combination of injunctions, stimulus checks, and increased unemployment benefits. All of that is in the process of expiring, or has. Meanwhile, large parts of the service economy remain dead and appear likely to for the foreseeable future.

To the extent that the current federal admin can do anything to keep things from looking as bad as they really are between now and the election, they will (as would any admin, in an election year) -- but, I think things are spiraling well out of where they can be controlled by additional stimulus, and that whatever happens with the election, things will absolutely tank afterwards.

I hope I am wrong, but, I am using the meantime to liquidate some collectables and other things which "have value now, but won't once the economy gets really bad". Given adequate food / water / medicine / tools to weather some substantial period of time, cash on hand trumps most other things. Pessimistic as I am, I'm not really expecting we get to the "cash is worthless" level of disarray, and if we do, well, not much I can do about it and I am setup as well as anyone to weather that.

Hilariously, some economists are saying that some of the weird variance seen in stock markets lately may actually be the result of professional gamblers who lack sports events to bet on, entering stock market betting instead: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/business/sports-gamblers-stocks-virus.html

 

Publicly traded bio tech therapeutics companies are also finding roadmaps to treat the most complicated conditions and diseases. About 500 companies working on so many pathological conditions from RNA to nerve and brain cells. Hedge funds and public investors are placing many hundreds of millions into this space.

 

Sweden's herd immunity coronavirus experiment has been a complete disaster - even those in charge of the plan are recognising it was a mistake. To date they have had around five or six times the number of fatalities as neighbouring countries, which locked down quickly and effectively, such as Denmark and Norway. Moreover, as those neighbouring countries have got their COVID-19 outbreaks under control quickly the OECD estimates that the economic impact of COVID-19 on them will be no greater than on Sweden.

 

Interesting. Well, that's more real money providing market depth in specific verticals, then, without actually doing anything to impact the bottom line of the average laid-off service worker who is 30 days away from eviction proceedings?

Is "hundreds of millions of dollars" enough to move the needle on a market with an 8.3 trillion dollar cap? That's a sincere question, I know very little about markets, I have always just bought index funds of one kind or another.

At some point the Dow is going to have to reflect the new reality we are living in, right? I do not believe we're nearly there.

 

Greed profits from supply and demand.

The big money in the stock market is either liberal or conservative hedged.

From the CEO of a cell phone company to a CEO of a commodity oil or platinum company.

This is what is causing so much political warfare. The rich within both political parties are playing greed games to line their pockets and I don't think that most of them care about

If that was not the case, then cell phones would be cheaper and the CEOs of any large corporation would not be so rich. So I agree with you @linearb. Greed does profit from supply and demand, even if it empties the pockets of some service workers.

 

I don't disagree, but, if we've learned anything from the last 3 weeks it's that elites start to care about all sorts of things once angry mobs start burning down metropolitan areas, and, further, there is already sufficient pent up rage and resentment to straight up overrun available police resources in some areas.

I hope I am wrong and we get some kind of extension on benefits to keep the dire situations from happening, but I'm sort of expecting that other big parts of the economy are going to fall apart by mid/late summer, and the unrest we've seen so far is just a preview of what's coming down the line.

We also seem to have crossed a critical threshold where increasingly brutal police crackdowns just increase the headcount at the next protest, and on paper cops are outnumbered by civilians 500:1.

Do you disagree?

 

@linearb I agree, but I also think that the elite are protecting their financial interest. A large cell phone company with hundreds of billions in the bank does not pay federal taxes and if they really cared about citizens they simply would. They would also not be charging so much for a phone to the citizens that they claim to care about. They don't provide honesty to what is equal human rights and what is fair human needs.

 

Thanks bro @linearb.

 

@Luman Hi bro.

Wait till you see my storm trooper helmet It's hard to find N95 masks up here (Toronto) but I can find cartridges and filters (N95/100 level) for respirators like the one in my pic. From what I understand they are a lot more effective. When my family needed protection if it wasn't for my wife who works in the health care industry we wouldn't have had any good masks, sanitizer etc. So when I saw this respirator I bought it just in case.

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well.

Stu

 

Good news everyone!

dexamethason, which allegedly reduces the death rate from this disease, is thought to prevent hearing loss from using certain antibiotics. So we shouldn't worry about our ears getting worse when treated with it.

 

Hi there don’t know if this has been mentioned but I found it interesting.
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/coronavirus-why-were-investigating-the-long-term-impact-on-hearing/

 

Source?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dexamethasone

Search for 'hearing loss'. I don't think it's very effective at otoprotection but at least it's not toxic to our ears.

 

Given a novel disease which has just been shown to sometimes cause brain damage in survivors of minor cases and has all kinds of potential long term vascular effects we don't understand, and given total failure of containment and the politicization of masks leading us to currently be back at 1000 deaths a day, 50,000+ new cases a day in the US....

...hearing damage from antibiotics is the last thing I am worried about, I want to not get the disease and I continue to be willing to stay home as long as needed.

IHME has us at > 300K by the end of the year if you just follow the curve (which is probably too optimistic), and there's no reason to think we're not going to smash 500K shortly after that. Some states have given up, the Federal response is "live with it" (which means "die with it") for a lot of people, we're talking about opening schools up in the middle of this in some of the worst hit states, and the effects of the recession which haven't really been felt yet because of extra unemployment, are going to lead to cascading evictions and homelessness over the next 30-60 days as the money runs out.

Buckle in folks, it's gonna be a dark fall. Stay safe. One analysis I said used sorta conservative numbers to conclude that if we just open schools and assume a super low CFR (data supported) for kids -- it's still going to kill 6000 US schoolchildren in the 2020/2021 school year. That's not counting parents / grandparents who get sick as a result -- that's almost 2 9/11s, made entirely out of pediatric corpses.

Good times.

 

Coronavirus cases and deaths now soaring in states such as Florida and Texas where lockdown was lifted too quickly:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53382540

Meanwhile sadly gullible individuals are falling victim to believing that the virus is simply fear-mongering from the Mainstream Media - with tragic consequences.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/13/30-year-old-dies-covid-party-texas
There really is no protecting some people from their own stupidity.

 

Viral Parody Fixed Stay Home Disney World Ad...

 

I would consider wearing that if I were on a long flight.

 

yep, but you won't find me on a plane until maaaaaybe 2022, given a vaccine.

The more I read from MDs, and the more I read about scary potential long term complications, the less bothered I am by the lack of childcare and distancing measures we're taking.

Here's a story from a couple days ago indicating that in some cases they are finding serious brain damage months later in people who had minor symptoms: https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-brain-damage/a-54111054

I also read an update from someone on another forum who works in a hospital, who said that they had a woman with COVID cough so hard that she prolapsed her cervix / uterus -- and that is the second patient to do that in a week.

Ugh. No thanks. I do start to worry about what being isolated with us almost completely is doing to our kid, but I worry about that less than "potential permanent brain damage for some or all of us".

"Just a flu". Ha!

 

It is my understanding that a small minority of people who recover from a flu also get serious complications.
https://www.mdlinx.com/article/5-su...-and-flu-complications/2RIynpqlR8Jo4EZElIIRmh

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/flu-complications#1

You had been taking that risk in the past, and thought nothing of it.

 

I've been quite aware of this -- my grandmother grew up in the 1918 era, I had some bad sicknesses as a kid, my own hearing problems may go back as far as a nasty viral situation that went aural when I was ~4, causing a night of blinding pain I still remember (in the ear which has always had worse tinnitus... and a scarred eardrum from rupturing during that infection). That particular complication is a lot more common in tiny kids, e-tubes not well formed, short.

Such complications from the flu are probably (almost certainly) more rare and definitely much better understood, and it does not do the vascular multi-organ-damage thing COVID is. Put differently, some stuff coming out of hospitals makes it look like most people who get this bad enough to get hospitalized have systemic blood clot problems and are at significant risk for mid to long term problems; that's not true of any influenza. Anything that can can an encephalitis can ofc cause neurological damage, but, again, this is incredibly uncommon with flu (viral meningitis is a bigger vector, there's an outbreak on some college campus or other every so often, including at my college while I was there, a girl died).

As far as "risk comparison" from where I'm reading this all -- I will take a COVID vaccine as soon as it's available and the MDs & nurses I know have done their diligence and taken it. Flu shots, I didn't bother to start getting until we had kids in the house. I don't actively want to get the flu, I've had it and it sucks, but it's not remotely the same risk calculus to me.

In other new -- "little kids don't seem to get this" is... looking less and less true as younger populations are exposed...



I've been talking to my wife and we're pretty likely to skip daycare this fall, stay home and see where the cards fall.

 

And, in "Today's reason why I'm staying home, for 7/16" we have this Atlantic piece with these high level hits

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/second-coronavirus-death-surge/614122/

The article has lots of pretty graphs too. The bottom line is that we are only now at the very beginning of the spike in deaths from the massive case increase over the past few weeks, and even if literally everyone changed all their high risk behaviors tomorrow it would take the death curves 3 weeks to catch up and level off.

There comes a point where gross, unthinkable things stop being doomerism and become inevitabilities. I think we crossed that line a little while ago, because a lot of what's already happened and the unscientific politicized responses would have seemed unthinkable to me in 2015.

 

Do we know how common it is with COVID-19?

 

nope, we sure don't. I'd put money on the overall mortality risk here being at least an order of magnitude higher across all age groups excluding 0-15, because I think the data overwhelmingly supports that. My strong suspicion is that weird and scary side effects mid to long term will likewise end up being more common than with flu, because I think that's where the early evidence points, but whether that means "10% of people have long term problems" or ".01% of people have long term problems", I am not qualified to assess. I also believe we're ~a couple years from having reasonable data-driven answers to those questions.

Beyond that, I won't make any bets, but to me that means "avoid exposure at all reasonable costs" until more of these unknowns are in focus. I had chicken pox as a kid and shingles as an adult, and I acquired cold sores in high school that will still flare under stress or immunosuppression. Collecting new viruses that mess me up in potentially new ways seems good to try to dodge.