Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

Sweden has a population similar to Ohio or maybe Michigan. Will be interesting to see how their strategy plays out.

We are gonna have to go the Sweden route soon enough.

(insert Zimbabwe wisdom)

[iam416]

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd hang my hat on Sweden just yet.

The model that I use is that calamities predicted by people calling for government action are always too large and the economic consequences predicted by those actions are always too small. That model proved to work once again in this case (notice how unemployment claims have been consistently above expectations).

This is a good rule of thumb.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Sweden has a population similar to Ohio or maybe Michigan. Will be interesting to see how their strategy plays out.

We are gonna have to go the Sweden route soon enough.

(insert Zimbabwe wisdom)

Q. What did Zimbabweans do before candles?

A. They had electricity.

[Tom W]

Sweden has a population similar to Ohio or maybe Michigan. Will be interesting to see how their strategy plays out.

We are gonna have to go the Sweden route soon enough.

(insert Zimbabwe wisdom)

Well, there you go- "Sweden practices socialism. We should too. It works." The comedy team of Biden and Whitmer now have a campaign slogan.

Mind not that it goes 180 against Whitmer's recent powerplay. That was just rhetoric- like fixing the Damn roads.

[Hannibal]

Yeah, I'm not sure I'd hang my hat on Sweden just yet.
.

Why not yet? Their borders are as open as everyone else's in the first world, which means that they are on the same exposure schedule as us.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Why not yet? Their borders are as open as everyone else's in the first world, which means that they are on the same exposure schedule as us.

One has to be very careful about making comparisons like that. First, as mentioned multiple times, there is so much variance WRT to testing and reporting strategies by country or state that comparisons tend to be weak if you're trying to equate one nation's or state's circumstance with another. Trend lines probably carry a bit more weight than absolute numbers but even then .....

I'm in talent's camp where the choices being faced by decision makers about easing mitigation and containment strategies - trading the potential for increasing cases/deaths for gradually reopening an economy - devolve to picking catastrophe A or catastrophe B. I wouldn't be throwing my hat in the ring with Sweden's circumstance just now, nor any other nation's because all of them have almost the same trajectories or trend lines over the last 40 or so days in New Case #s, CFR, GR. Do we have the necessary leadership to make the right call given the data is not going to be perfect or even very close to it?

Maybe but I don't think it is present at the federal level, probably should not be there as a matter of the principals of governance America embraces (or should embrace) but instead at the state level and I feel better about that than I do about the federal government and PDJT.

There are two parallels here in US history going back to WWII: (1) General Eisenhower's decision to land forces on the beaches of Normandy. Ike faced shitty weather, the potential for huge losses of American and British lives pitted against the threat of Germany extending their dominion over all of Europe and eventually the Americas. Defeat in France for the allies would have been catastrophic. Catastrophe A or B. Pick one. (2) Truman's decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The deaths of millions of American lives with a ground invasion of Imperial Japan or introduce the age of nuclear warfare to force a surrender by the leadership of that nation. Shitty option one or two. Pick one.

Trump is no Eisenhower. He is no Truman. He is, in fact, the antithesis of both. But let there be no doubt. The reckoning, the choice between two shitty options, is coming and for me, living here in FL, I'd rather have decisions about reopening FL's (and the rest of the SE's economies) resting with those governors rather than with Trump. It's not that he doesn't have knowledgeable people advising him and resources to tap into like I'm sure history reveals Ike and Harry in their time, it's that Trump, along with his narcissism, has a pretty well defined record of not listening to any of that.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Incidentally, Andrew McCarthy of the NRO wrote a good piece today on Turmp's claim that he alone has the power to decide when the economy will reopen. The link is from The Hill and is a reprint of his NRO article. If you're interested in the political debate regarding Federalism, the constitutional roles of the US government v; the power resident in the states, it's a good read. If it's too long for you, I'd recommend you skip it and just keep moving forward uninformed or thinking you know it all about such things.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/...ou-might-think

[froot loops]

This has happened so soon, we'll not know how this spread until much later. You can't just say, "they have open borders" and assume everything else is equal. A lot of it is travel and what places are destination sites. How is Sweden doing compared to its neighbors is somewhat useful and they aren't doing as well relative to them. The thing to realize is we don't know the spread in each individual country, they are only testing people with symptoms.

Another interesting case is Ireland versus Great Britain. Great Britain tried the herd immunity and Ireland was much quicker to act. The CFR in GB is much worse.

[AlabamAlum]

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

[iam416]

Buchanan:

Yeah, I'm not in the "this is a federal problem" demanding a national solution. I'm very much in the state-by-state approach. It's the federal government's job to marshall resources to the fire and be ready to go for the next fire. But there's no sense in requiring Wyoming to do as New York does.

Another interesting case is Ireland versus Great Britain. Great Britain tried the herd immunity and Ireland was much quicker to act. The CFR in GB is much worse.

Speaking of state-by-state, I'd caution that low numbers mean we're looking at a higher potential for outliers or outbreaks creating statistical anamolie (e.g., South Dakota!). We could look at the US and say: hey, Wyoming is doing a fuckton better than Ohio (let alone M or NY or NJ) by every conceivable metric -- raw numbers, per capita numbers. Doesn't matter. And Wyoming is open as fuck.

England's population density is roughly 4X Ireland's. Right now their death per million is 2X Ireland's. I don't discount the UK's initial decision, but there are a lot of factors that go into the spread of this thing, and lockdown is but one. Honestly, Ohio v M are almost identical in terms of lockdown measures and comparable in terms of population -- far more so than UK-Ireland. And the discrepancy between those two is, on a per capita basis, way more disparate than UK-Ireland.

I think at the the end of the day as this thing thoroughly permeates each country in a far more representative way you're going to see far more comparable numbers.

[Whitley]

This has happened so soon, we'll not know how this spread until much later. You can't just say, "they have open borders" and assume everything else is equal. A lot of it is travel and what places are destination sites. How is Sweden doing compared to its neighbors is somewhat useful and they aren't doing as well relative to them. The thing to realize is we don't know the spread in each individual country, they are only testing people with symptoms.

Another interesting case is Ireland versus Great Britain. Great Britain tried the herd immunity and Ireland was much quicker to act. The CFR in GB is much worse.

Yep GB tried it and when they saw it was going badly they quickly locked everything down.

[iam416]

AA:

I correctly stated this morning: "This is the first time the US is playing an "enemey" that we're gonna to lose to and it's really just a matter of keeping them from running the score up on us TOO BAD." So, shut it with your WarGames nonsense.

We're basically getting a check to bus our sorry asses to Tuscaloosa on Chickenshit Saturday and hope The Nick spends all day playing 5th stringers so no one gets hurt for the Iron Bowl. Except the coronavirus only plays first stringers.

[AlabamAlum]

AA:

I correctly stated this morning: "This is the first time the US is playing an "enemey" that we're gonna to lose to and it's really just a matter of keeping them from running the score up on us TOO BAD." So, shut it with your WarGames nonsense.

We're basically getting a check to bus our sorry asses to Tuscaloosa on Chickenshit Saturday and hope The Nick spends all day playing 5th stringers so no one gets hurt for the Iron Bowl. Except the coronavirus only plays first stringers.

[froot loops]

Buchanan:

Yeah, I'm not in the "this is a federal problem" demanding a national solution. I'm very much in the state-by-state approach. It's the federal government's job to marshall resources to the fire and be ready to go for the next fire. But there's no sense in requiring Wyoming to do as New York does.



Speaking of state-by-state, I'd caution that low numbers mean we're looking at a higher potential for outliers or outbreaks creating statistical anamolie (e.g., South Dakota!). We could look at the US and say: hey, Wyoming is doing a fuckton better than Ohio (let alone M or NY or NJ) by every conceivable metric -- raw numbers, per capita numbers. Doesn't matter. And Wyoming is open as fuck.

England's population density is roughly 4X Ireland's. Right now their death per million is 2X Ireland's. I don't discount the UK's initial decision, but there are a lot of factors that go into the spread of this thing, and lockdown is but one. Honestly, Ohio v M are almost identical in terms of lockdown measures and comparable in terms of population -- far more so than UK-Ireland. And the discrepancy between those two is, on a per capita basis, way more disparate than UK-Ireland.

I think at the the end of the day as this thing thoroughly permeates each country in a far more representative way you're going to see far more comparable numbers.

Agreed on the density it does have something to do with it. I think travel points have a lot to do with it as well. I don't know about the Ohio airports but I know DTW has direct flights to China. There is actually not that many airports that have that(it looks like 9 and most of them are hotspots). There is a lot of traffic through China through DTW, I think with Ohio V Michigan DeWine went in much earlier and really Michigan should have went in earlier than Ohio. There is also a lot of traffic through DTW to Italy because of FCA. London was going to bear a big brunt because Heathrow is a gigantic airport.

Again we will not know how this spread really well until it has kind of passed, there are clues but I think we are seeing 10 percent of the picture.

My larger point was we are fairly early in the process, if this were to play put with no restrictions we would have some regional differences but the curves would all look similar. These restrictions are buying time measures until we see some therapeutics and ultimately a vaccine. Of course there is going to be an opening up, but there is going to have to be some sort of mix of mitigation measures. Hopefully some of these measures will spare these other states from what we've seen.

[Whitley]

If it is only 10% capture......it would put the total number at 5.97 million in the US. Yeah, we got awhile yet.