OT - Some potential good news

Our daughter, who is living in Beijing, after many days of sending us little videos of empty streets when she was out walking (nobody in the streets made it pretty safe for her to go out walking), told us that when she went out today, after a few days off, there were many more people out walking on the streets, and friends have told her that there were also more people on the subways. The big crisis seems to have passed. That was two months approximately from beginning to end in China. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. Pretty scary at its peak, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
Saul

And please, there isn’t much point in adding to this thread, unless you actually have something to add.

Saul

56 Likes

If it is true that “chloroquine” is a possible treatment for Covid-19 then much of the panic may abate and we might find it reasonable to start putting some cash to work. Since I am not a medical professional I cannot attest to the validity of this information.

the P/S ratios on my favorite stocks: AYX, DDOG and TTD are at unbelievable levels. Not sure yet if there will be a reset of acceptable measurement for the value of growth stocks but the answer will be revealed over the next few months.

If it is true that “chloroquine” is a possible treatment for Covid-19 then much of the panic may abate

It seems to be helpful, but I believe they’ve been using it in Italy and they still have a large number of dead.
The problem with a disease as contagious as this one, if a treatment cuts hospital stays and deaths in half, that only buys you 3 to 4 additional days, because that’s the amount of time it takes for the number of infected to double unless you take harsh lockdown measures.

1 Like

Our daughter, who is living in Beijing, after many days of sending us little videos of empty streets when she was out walking (nobody in the streets made it pretty safe for her to go out walking), told us that when she went out today, after a few days off, there were many more people out walking on the streets, and friends have told her that there were also more people on the subways.

Could you please ask her if everyone is wearing masks?

Could you please ask her if everyone is wearing masks?

Yes they were.

2 Likes

Could you please ask her if everyone is wearing masks?

Yes they were.

The masks, I believe, are the crucial item missing in the Western strategy and discussion. China, Taiwan, South Korea all have UNIVERSAL face masks as a center piece of their strategy. They appear to work well to prevent asymptomatic and low-symptomatic spread (the spread that happens before you can reasonably quarantine people), which appears to be responsible for the bulk of infections.
We need to get started on mass producing them ASAP for the entire population, but it’s not even being discussed.

6 Likes

Could you please ask her if everyone is wearing masks?

Yes they were.

The masks, I believe, are the crucial item missing in the Western strategy and discussion. China, Taiwan, South Korea all have UNIVERSAL face masks as a center piece of their strategy. They appear to work well to prevent asymptomatic and low-symptomatic spread (the spread that happens before you can reasonably quarantine people), which appears to be responsible for the bulk of infections. We need to get started on mass producing them ASAP for the entire population, but it’s not even being discussed.

Hi AD,

Yes, my wife and I now wear face masks whenever we go out.

But what has happened in China is amazing!!! They had been down to 10 or 20 new cases but they reported today NO NEW CASES! This is just two months after this started in China, and they started from ground zero! No knowledge about what it was! No test kits of course. No warning. No preparation of ventilators or medical supplies. And it’s over in two months thanks to quarantine, enforced lock down, and everyone wearing facemarks. They have no no magic medicines.

One thing that this makes clear is that this isn’t going to last forever. They have shown what you need to do, and it’s simple. It shuts things down for a while, but then it’s over!

Saul

22 Likes

Yes, the outcome in China is Amazing!

Here is an article that I thought interesting that expands on that.

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-nobel-laureate-…

I think we’ll be through this sooner than later, but am keeping an eye on the trends. But as an example, WA which has the 2nd most documented cases showed only 2 new cases yesterday! Thats quite amazing!

I saw another stat on new cases in Italy that was promising.

Chris

5 Likes

I think we’ll be through this sooner than later, but am keeping an eye on the trends. But as an example, WA which has the 2nd most documented cases showed only 2 new cases yesterday! Thats quite amazing!

I’m not finding any news like this. What I saw was that King County alone yesterday was 44 new cases.

I saw another stat on new cases in Italy that was promising.

What stat is that? The stats I am looking at show continued rising cases and deaths.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

1 Like

Yesterday I looked at the same site that you linked to and it said 2. So not sure how accurate the data is. Today it’s blank for WA…?

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

As for Italy this is what I was referring to.

https://twitter.com/UWVirology/status/1240389214774140928

It shuts things down for a while, but then it’s over!

First, you need a few billion face masks. Secondly, the Chinese also have a surveillance state where they can trace exactly who met who when (via smartphone), and they have a massive government infrastructure to do such traces and to quarantine people.
This is extremely useful.
Neither of these two components is easily or very quickly replicated by the west, in particular America, which has only very scarce public health resources.
I’d estimate that it would take 2-3 months at minimum from the world “Let’s go balls-out on face mask production” to get the required amount of masks.
And nobody has said “go” yet, or is even discussing the possibility of such a production program.

3 Likes

Duma, your post is a political post which is strongly off topic and it will be deleted.
Saul

4 Likes

I don’t think we should underestimate the difficulty ahead of us of eradicating this virus.

Italy is still going up every day in cases and deaths and Washington is still going up (contrary to the messages on this board).

We all have our part to do by just avoiding large crowds and other people, but hopefully the summer months put an end to this. Meanwhile, we need to just be fully aware this virus is still spreading. Andrew Cuomo is calling for 110,000 ICU beds within 45 days, versus the 53,000 hospital beds, and 3,000 ICU beds they have right now.

China is a success story, so is Hong Kong. What happens here has yet to play out. So we just need to remain vigilant. That is all.

2 Likes

We don’t want to invest in China because we can’t trust the news from there.

We see hope in overcoming a virus because we trust the news coming from there.

Left hand, right hand.

Let’s watch Italy.

6 Likes

They have shown what you need to do, and it’s simple. It shuts things down for a while, but then it’s over!

This seems quite optimistic. Since it can take weeks to show symptoms, it’s quite possible it is still out there waiting to be spread once inter-personal activity starts to increase. We won’t know that for a month or so. We won’t really know until people stop feeling like they have to wear face masks.

4 Likes

of course we are making the assumption with China that they are telling the truth. Isolation is easier to control when most people live in large buildings with limited entrances and when you have lots of police per capita. Can free societies do this- apparently not. At least with the young people on Spring Break.

But clearly they have shown the way. Masks (despite what much of US media says you can learn to control face touching when out) Take temperature of people before you let the out or let them in stores Social distancing becomes easier when streets are less crowded. Quarantine the sick. Have adequate number of test kits-most people with fever and cough have something else.

I have not been out much but I live next to a busy street , and I estimate that there is half or less as much rush hour traffic as there was a week ago. All the neighbors I saw walking respected the 6 ft rule. Not wearing masks but not coughing either.

2 Likes

But what has happened in China is amazing!!! They had been down to 10 or 20 new cases but they reported today NO NEW CASES!

I would be a bit leery about reporting in China.

They have shown what you need to do, and it’s simple. It shuts things down for a while, but then it’s over!

Yes. Unfortunately, that “for a while” could be four+ months, and at the end of that the global economy might be considerably smaller than it was before.

4 Likes

But what has happened in China is amazing!!! They had been down to 10 or 20 new cases but they reported today NO NEW CASES! This is just two months after this started in China, and they started from ground zero! - Saul

I think China, S. Korea have shown us how to greatly reduce the spread of this virus - it’s a great experimental proof of a solution in the middle of the outbreak.

I do think we should be prepared for multiple waves. All pandemics in the last hundred years or so have come in waves, with 2nd and 3rd waves coming in worse than the first.

If this virus reduces in the heat/humidity of summer, as it seems to, we may be coming to a natural end of this wave in then next couple of months in the northern hemisphere. In India, where summer is already starting in most of the country, corona virus spread is already very slow, even though social distancing just started recently as in the US.

It will likely start again presumably around the time of flu season next fall. The hope is by then, everyone will have their act together with therapeutics, and perhaps even an early vaccine. From a health safety point of view, we shouldn’t become complacent, however, and be ready for the next wave.

From our stocks point of view, I am guessing wildly that we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel because of the reduction in China, and therapeutics coming available in the next month or so, and all the fiscal and monetary stimulus. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks this panic will go down, people will have better info.

Lots of companies will end at a new stable lower level. I’m thinking our stocks growth rates won’t be too affected, and with the lower interest rates, we can even see a higher base level for our SAAS stocks. I’ve been nibbling at a lot of the great deals out there, and plan to do more buying on down days.

10 Likes

I am guessing wildly that we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel because of the reduction in China

China’s society, and culture, is autocratic by nature.

Images of crowded beaches, continued mass transit, open bars, and the overall unwillingness of western societies to eliminate social connectivity with force tells me that any hope hung on the success of largely autocratic societies should not be reflective in westernized democracies.

For stocks, I think this largely means focusing on opportunities where the sales motion is self-generated vs enterprise. Eventually, those top-down sales motions will find a remote way in. However, if the implementation relied on an on-prem team to train/spin up staff (APPN, ZS, NTNX, MDB?), then I strongly suspect you’ll see some stumbling as they figure out how to implement solutions remotely.

What we are witnessing in results such as CRWD is those companies with a strong remote support and setup group are having success.

I tend to also be on the side of the fence that we are witnessing an accelerated shift of cloud solutions, running the gambit of stocks we discuss here. While I personally feel that some will come back to earth in a few months (ZM), I think it will largely remain as the out and out winner. I think the education space will be a massive buyer here. Right now, that is free.

I’m still up in the air about if TDOC is a first-mover, or a category creator, in telemedicine space. They’ve acquired so many properties to justify their growth, perhaps this is their moment to solidify results.

Finally, if we have to identify the losers, or those greatest impacted, it is anything retail facing at the moment. SQ in particular will suffer greatly from the “strongly encouraged” closure of many small businesses and shops. SHOP… feels like SHOP will also suffer somewhat, although, there is now a greater need than ever to have an online presence. The startup of SHOP is all online and seemless. Also, Toby is an incredible solution maker. I may be a buyer of SHOP here.

TTD will inevitably suffer due to the pull back of advertising dollars - but still is a nice long-term play as the world will point out that personalized advertisement just came more important due to limited spend. Finally, ROKU’s fall in price has little to do with eyes on the platform and streaming hours (NFLX’s gain), and more the fact that the number of devices in living rooms has been abruptly halted. So the only incremental spend is on the platform, but there is no expansion. Ironically, Amazon Fire TV suffers the same slow down risk, so perhaps a wash.

Suffice to say again, Autocratic cultures should not be indicative of westernized responses. However, my feelings on stocks can be seen above.

Just a Fool

4 Likes

I think China, S. Korea have shown us how to greatly reduce the spread of this virus - it’s a great experimental proof of a solution in the middle of the outbreak.

Some here say we need to watch Italy and perhaps we should. But Italy still seems to be an outlier likely for several reasons which I believe I discussed earlier - namely a much older demographic, a much higher population density and a much lower number of ICU beds per capita (about 1/3 of ours). That’s the perfect recipe for the worst case scenario in a pandemic.

We should watch other countries like China, South Korea, etc. which seem to be under better control. There are different methods being used, some which might be still effective but less disruptive to the economy than the complete shutdowns we are resorting to. China used aggressive shutdowns but South Korea seems to be having good results with early testing and quarantining without as much economic disruption.

I do think we should be prepared for multiple waves. All pandemics in the last hundred years or so have come in waves, with 2nd and 3rd waves coming in worse than the first.

If this virus reduces in the heat/humidity of summer, as it seems to, we may be coming to a natural end of this wave in then next couple of months in the northern hemisphere. In India, where summer is already starting in most of the country, corona virus spread is already very slow, even though social distancing just started recently as in the US.

It will likely start again presumably around the time of flu season next fall. The hope is by then, everyone will have their act together with therapeutics, and perhaps even an early vaccine. From a health safety point of view, we shouldn’t become complacent, however, and be ready for the next wave.

Yes, there may be waves. But given our past experience with viral epidemics and their natural course, I am still very optimistic overall for numerous reasons. The virus is unstable and the more virulent strains tend not to spread as far since they kill their host. People who recover develop a degree of immunity which protects them and also prevents further spread. We have identified the highest risk groups and are more vigilant in protecting them. Data also suggests that most people have mild symptoms or none at all (people we are not testing) so the actual number of people affected is much higher and the case fatality rate is likely much lower than any guesstimate thus far. These viruses are typically negatively impacted by warmer weather and greater humidity which is right around the corner. We have developed better habits including better hand washing which should continue. Last but not least, we should almost certainly have a vaccine within a year.

We reacted based on numerous worst case assumptions which still seem unlikely to occur.

From our stocks point of view, I am guessing wildly that we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel because of the reduction in China, and therapeutics coming available in the next month or so, and all the fiscal and monetary stimulus. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks this panic will go down, people will have better info.

Lots of companies will end at a new stable lower level. I’m thinking our stocks growth rates won’t be too affected, and with the lower interest rates, we can even see a higher base level for our SAAS stocks. I’ve been nibbling at a lot of the great deals out there, and plan to do more buying on down days.

Given my optimistic view above, I agree that the longer term picture for our stocks remains intact, likely improved for some. In the best case, the prices stabilize and we can add to our highest conviction stocks before a rebound. I don’t think the viral pandemic will be the limiting factor. The biggest issues will be our further responses to the current pandemic as well as better planning for future pandemics. We need to develop a plan which does not cause as much economic damage. There are high value interventions which might be less disruptive than business shutdowns or community lockdowns - perhaps initial stringent travel restrictions from the areas of outbreaks and also more aggressive initial testing and targeted quarantining as well as better protection of vulnerable populations (mainly the elderly). Better voluntary social distancing and precautionary measures (simple hand washing) in future outbreaks might be very effective. I think we can do it.

Other factors outside this medical issue will likely be more significant in a few months - the impact of a recession, etc. The virus was just only partly responsible for the market drop.

Dave (an optimistic emergency physician)

12 Likes