Objectively intelligent.

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Interesting. Neither is creating value, but that suggests that buybacks squander it. I gather that some companies don't like paying dividends because they think investors will expect them regularly. Maybe they prefer buybacks as a one-time thing?

To me, it is mostly point no. 1 iat the end of this article. Insiders benefit at the expense of everyday shareholders, and that incentivizes bad decision making by management. https://seekingalpha.com/article/425...s-vs-dividends

[LessinSF]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Body shaming others is exposing yourself as deserving moral shaming.

Give me liberty and death!

P.S. Patrick Henry owned 67 people.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Super disturbing news I saw this morning was a study showing that more than half (54%, IIRC) of asymptomatic people with the virus suffer "ground glass" lung damage, as compared to three-quarters (74%, IIRC) of those who were symptomatic. You may not notice that you have it, but it's still damaging your lungs.

Even worse is this:

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with COVID-19, are dying from strokes - The Washington Post
https://apple.news/AwGK2t1DBTtCMRtFEuQ9_cA

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Even worse is this:

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with COVID-19, are dying from strokes - The Washington Post
https://apple.news/AwGK2t1DBTtCMRtFEuQ9_cA

Did you guys play with Gang of Four? Their guitar player, Andy Gill, was great. Died of “pneumonia” in January.

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Did you guys play with Gang of Four? Their guitar played, Andy Gill, was great. Died of “pneumonia” in January.

No but I was a big fan. Very sad.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Even worse is this:

Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with COVID-19, are dying from strokes - The Washington Post
https://apple.news/AwGK2t1DBTtCMRtFEuQ9_cA

Yup. Now read the frequency of those cases. The stories themselves admit the instances are exceedingly rare, but you have to read on to catch that — far beyond what the average news consumer would take the time to digest.

The news is doing flips to find the scariest outliers and pimp those anecdotes as if they’re common. They’ve a credulous public, and that shit sells.

WaPo is basically a hysteria rag. I follow it in my feed and read the story you cite. It’s a rare occurrence played up as statistically common.

WaPo is a shithole if of clickbait headlines, and stories they admit are wrong but never remove from the search engines. They’re a dressed up Fox News.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

That's all I read. Why? Because the Santa Clara study has been shredded. But you don't need to understand the math involved. The death toll so far in New York City is 11,500 or so, from a population of 8,300,000. That's a death toll -- so far! -- of .139%. But people are still dying, lots, and no one thinks the entire population has been infected. A recent study suggests that 21% of the people in New York City has been infected, so multiply that death toll by 5 and you get a death rate of .693%, assuming no one else dies. But we also have reports that there are as many as 10x deaths in New York City as normal.

I have a full-time job that isn't this, though I do read the Twitter some (hi Hank), and even I know that this guy's fatality rate is way, way too low. Does he know? Is he misinformed, or trying to mislead? Did you think about this?

“Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.”

Refute. (Not with the silly 10X bullshit. I’d prefer to have a sane conversation.)

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

No but I was a big fan. Very sad.

Love is like anthrax, and that is something that I don’t want to catch.


Prophetic?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

“Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness. If you do not already have an underlying chronic condition, your chances of dying are small, regardless of age. And young adults and children in normal health have almost no risk of any serious illness from COVID-19.”

Refute. (Not with the silly 10X bullshit. I’d prefer to have a sane conversation.)

You answer me first, Sparky.

And 10x is the high end, from one particular Gothamist/WNYC story, so try this, which says it has been 4x the number of normal deaths in New York City.

If people die because they had heart attacks and didn't want to go to the hospital for fear of catching Covid-19, they are still dead. If they had an underlying illness, they are still dead. If they are older, they are still dead.

eta: More problems with the Stanford/Santa Clara study. Maybe I'm just paying more attention than you because I live here?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

That's all I read. Why? Because the Santa Clara study has been shredded. But you don't need to understand the math involved. The death toll so far in New York City is 11,500 or so, from a population of 8,300,000. That's a death toll -- so far! -- of .139%. But people are still dying, lots, and no one thinks the entire population has been infected. A recent study suggests that 21% of the people in New York City has been infected, so multiply that death toll by 5 and you get a death rate of .693%, assuming no one else dies. But we also have reports that there are as many as 10x deaths in New York City as normal.

I have a full-time job that isn't this, though I do read the Twitter some (hi Hank), and even I know that this guy's fatality rate is way, way too low. Does he know? Is he misinformed, or trying to mislead? Did you think about this?

But you can’t adjust the the deaths and the instances of infection 1:1. You’re running them in parallel. Why? On what basis?

I also note, you’re quick to get behind that which supports you, quick to align against that which challenges you. Stanford has been shredded, but anecdata about NYC at a 10x death rate is worth noting?

Burning down the house to smoke out the mouse. It’s a rotten virus, but the more we learn, the more measured our approaches and less extreme our fear should be.

My concern on this, having spoken to friends who’ve had it, is possibly two weeks of malaise. That sucks.

If this kills me, considering the other statistical chances I’ve taken with my life, okay. It’s a perfectly comical and ignominious end.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

But you can’t adjust the the deaths and the instances of infection 1:1. You’re running them in parallel. Why? On what basis?

I don't understand what you mean or what you're asking. The virus has already killed .14% of the population of New York City, and the best evidence is that it has infected 21% of that population. That is pretty strong evidence that it kills at least .7% of the people who get it, far higher that the Santa Clara study suggests. And we also know that it is killing more people than that, because of this phenomena of additional deaths over the usual number, though that is hard to measure.

I also note, you’re quick to get behind that which supports you, quick to align against that which challenges you. Stanford has been shredded, but anecdata about NYC at a 10x death rate is worth noting?

The anecdata is not a study, but suggests that the official death rate is an undercount. The phenomena are pretty well established, if not the magnitude. Do you disagree with that?

Burning down the house to smoke out the mouse. It’s a rotten virus, but the more we learn, the more measured our approaches and less extreme our fear should be.

Unless learning more means that a lot of people are dying, we don't have a cure or a good way to treat the symptoms, and we need to do what we're doing to avoid mass contagion that will kill a lot more people. Every indication is that a lot of places have avoided what has been happening in New York and Milan by enforcing social distancing. Stopping now is like saying, hey, it's raining, but I'm not getting wet, so I guess I can throw away this umbrella.

My concern on this, having spoken to friends who’ve had it, is possibly two weeks of malaise. That sucks.

If this kills me, considering the other statistical chances I’ve taken with my life, okay. It’s a perfectly comical and ignominious end.

I really don't want to go to the Covid ward in the Kaiser hospital in San Jose. If you want to take your chances, why would I try to talk you out of it. But when you call for lifting the social distancing, you are saying that everyone else should accept that risk too -- that because you are happy to be cavalier with your own life, everyone else should be too. If there's anything we should have learned in the last two months, it's that the decisions people make on these issues have enormous costs to everyone else. When you are cavalier with your own life, it affects others around you.

That's hard for a libertarian to accept, so it's better just to find people saying that the risks are really low, and pretend the problem away.

eta: The death toll in NYC is up again today, above 11,800, so that .139% figure from yesterday is now .142%.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The World Health Organization is warning that people who have had coronavirus are not necessarily immune by the presence of antibodies from getting the virus again.
“There is no evidence yet that people who have had COVID-19 will not get a second infection,” the WHO said in a new scientific brief.
The WHO is warning against governments issuing “immunity passports” to people who have had COVID-19, assuming they are safe to resume normal life.
“At this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an 'immunity passport' or 'risk-free certificate,'" the brief said.
The WHO published the brief as guidance on adjusting public health and social measures for the next phase of the COVID-19 response.
“People who assume that they are immune to a second infection because they have received a positive test result may ignore public health advice. The use of such certificates may therefore increase the risks of continued transmission," the WHO said.
The health agency says it is reviewing evidence on antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19-infection. The brief says “most” of the studies show that people who have “recovered from infection have antibodies to the virus.”
But as of yesterday, no study has “evaluated whether the presence of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to subsequent infection by this virus in humans.

SFGate

[LessinSF]

+ global stability uncertainty, but all the markets care about is liquidity. https://www.businessinsider.com/kim-...we-know-2020-4

[Icky Thump]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

The WHO said, blah blah, china Number 1. SFGate

Fake news. They withdrew the article.

https://twitter.com/who/status/1254160937805926405?s=21

“We expect that most people who are infected with #COVID19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection.”.

TAIWAN #1!!!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

Fake news. They withdrew the article.

https://twitter.com/who/status/1254160937805926405?s=21

“We expect that most people who are infected with #COVID19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection.”.

TAIWAN #1!!!

I'm not so reassured by "most". YMMV.