Magox

Mortgage applications up 9% FROM LAST YEAR! Interesting little tidbit there at the end. I would like to see some proof of that. I don't doubt it, I do think that the virus will change some consumer and migratory behavior.

Here is from the guy who called them out.

Wait until the end. lol

We have created a lot of COVID content, I'm not the one writing them but I direct what sort of content to be written. And the guy who writes the stuff for us is British and I think he has a leftward bent to him. So when he writes things, often times I see bias in one shape or another. I'm always like - Just give it straight, no bent. We aren't trying to change people's minds about anything, we just want to inform them. Give them the facts and let them make up their own minds. - And we are driving around 25,000 visitors per week to our blogs. I thought - let's do a poll. - I really wanted to do a poll with more proper options to them than what the polling is asking. We tried to balance out the crowds by selecting Trump/FOX and MSNBC/CNN/Biden. So I don't think that it's disproportionately going to Trump people. I'm just guessing that they are more motivated to respond.

I'm the head of sales for the company that I work for and we've been pushing out lots of content on Social Media primarily FB and we are currently conducting a poll. The way they make their vote is via emoji lol. However, we have provided more options than the polling companies. 1) Open up the economy 2) Wait until a vaccine/cure 3) Do what your governor suggests 4) I don't know. When we did this we targeted people who were fans of Donald Trump and FOX news on one side and MSNBC, CNN and Joe Biden on the other side to try to get as even of a mix as possible of audience. And so far we have over 1300 responses and the overwhelming majority of them want to open up. It's not a scientific poll, but the numbers are striking. And read the comments, it's crazy the amount of people that want to get back to more normalcy. I have always believed that the polling results of people wanting more caution was a paper tiger. I think the energy is definitely to get back to work. As people are learning more about the Virus and seeing it not effect areas where they live, people are understandably rebelling. Here is the polling of our FB thingy to see for yourself. lol

Hardy Har Har

It's plausible. I'm not going to lie, the recovery is starting offer more rapidly than I anticipated. With that said, my biggest worries wasn't so much the takeoff of the recovery, that I thought would happen. It's the follow through. There will be many restaurants and small businesses that will permanently shudder as a result of the lock downs. They will eventually be replaced but that doesn't happen overnight and in order for the economy to be made whole, that means all those businesses that shut down will have to be revived again in some shape or form. I know this is an unpopular position on this board, but with interest rates near 0%, it makes a lot of sense for the government to borrow to stimulate the economy. I'm not a full Keynesian sort of guy, I disagreed with much of it under Obama because I thought the problems the economy had were structural which required structural policy prescriptions. This is not structural, this is a matter of reopening and giving stimulus in targeted manners to get the economy more quickly back to whole.

Also, if this holds this would be another very important economic indicator. Would signal bullish longer-term trend for the stock market.

This was a blowout number. Maybe we will get sort of a V recovery? Not sure, but encouraging none the less.

Just for ***** and giggles

It appears that Didier Raoult suggests data manipulation behind the recent study published in the Lancet on hydroxycholorquine.

This would be interesting if they could demonstrably prove this to be the case.

Again, I don't know if it works or not. My suspicions are that with some sort of combination that it works early on and/or for prophylactic purposes. This was an interesting finding from the UAE. They have a paper that they published to review. You can read that here https://www.dha.gov.ae/en/HealthRegulation/Documents/COVID National Guidelines FINAL 18 March.pdf

I do think that Republican governors had better policies in place, particularly with the Nursing home practices. They also didn't have as stringent stay-at-home orders which I think in a sense could also be attributed to it. If everyone is crowding into grocery stores, Costco's, Walmart's and targets then reason does seem to stand that you will have larger crowds in fewer places, as opposed to having crowds more evenly disbursed among more places to frequent. But a lot of this has to do with population density and maybe heat and humidity. But it's tough to explain away the difference of Ohio vs MI, IL and PA. Or how Florida and SC with such a high population of seniors did so well. Or Texas who has plenty of high density populations did so well comparatively to other states. I do believe that Republican governors were much better than democratic governors on how they managed the crisis.

Actually, I do think it is. Especially moving forward. I understand why we did the stay-at-home orders considering it was a novel virus. So I'm not criticizing that this is the route we went with, just that it was the wrong route now that we have plenty of data to make that assessment. We never had any areas that weren't able to cope with the influx of COVID related hospitalizations, which was the whole rationale behind "flattening the curve". In retrospect, protecting the most vulnerable and some additional social distancing measures would have been much more prudent than these draconian lock downs that didn't net nearly the reduction in COVID related deaths that they had hoped. Now moving forward, there should be no circumstance that states reimpose stay-at-home orders knowing what we know today.

It could be...I think there are going to be a lot of things that are going to surprise us about how and why some people, countries, demographics were affected differently than others. This would be a plausible explanation.

This was what I was alluding to yesterday, about how some of the other flu's that we may have been contracting could potentially be providing partial immunity for COVID. If so, this would be very welcome news.

The article didn't need to discuss vaccines because it was speaking to the response of COVID. Vaccines aren't in play for some time out, so that wouldn't have made sense to discuss Vaccines. In regards to masks, didn't state an opinion one way or the other on it, (at least not to my recollection) and the point of the article was to discuss hard data. Yes, some of it is cherry picked and you can always make a strong case with cherry picked data. With that said, the compilation of data that was provided was pretty strong. I think we are now beyond the point of determining whether or not Sweden had the right model. It's clear that they did, I know that there are many media sources that want to continue making the case that it hasn't, but the media is not to be trusted as we know they have their biases. The whole point of these stay-at-home orders was to "flatten the curve". What was the point to "flatten the curve"? So that the hospital systems wouldn't be overwhelmed and that patients who needed COVID care would have the care they needed. In that regards, even at Sweden's peak, their health systems had plenty of capacity to do so. That's it, that was the point. Sweden accomplished that, Check mate. Here is how Sweden compares on deaths per capita against some other European hard hit countries. Here is which age demographic has died from Sweden - around 90% of the deaths were under the age of 70. And this chart shows that 70% of the deaths have come from Nursing homes. This has been Sweden's biggest failure, similar to that of New York but even worse in raw numbers. If they had gotten this under control to a much more acceptable number this would have dramatically effected their raw death totals. - The people who were out and about in Sweden were not the ones' who suffered these casualties. It was the sickest and most vulnerable who were already practicing stay-at-home practices due to their age and health conditions. And This was an interesting observation by Norway's Chief Health officer:

The previous two days didn’t have a lowering of the positivity test rate. Today’s was much better. Silver was saying today that it’s plausible that we could be stuck with around the 1000 death count per day for some time. Not predicting it but saying it’s plausible. Idk, I know there are converging forces - one side more people are getting out - The other with more heat and humidity and possible cyclical nature? Not sure. - I think we will go lower. My optimistic hopes are that we get down to below 300 on average. That may be too optimistic. However I have began seeing some evidence and theories that people catching other sorts of flus is building up immune systems that could portend to more community immunity. I want to see a little more about that before I post about it. Also, I’m beginning to form some of my own theories but it’s late and I’m on my phone. I will share them later. I did see Elon Musk recommend for people to read this article. I thought it was pretty straight forward and made a really good case about how we overreacted and had the world had the wrong response aside from Sweden and the author backs it up with lots of compelling data. Worth the read. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/05/21/how_fear_groupthink_drove_unnecessary_global_lockdowns_143253.html

Everything moving in the right direction. Some of the data is typically under reported on Mondays but what is most impressive is not continuing lower trend but rather that there were over 440k tests with only 4% positive test rate.

It’s the same everywhere, it’s partly socioeconomic in regards to the comorbidities but more so than anything, it’s age. Brazil is no different

Another report that shows trends improving

It’s obvious to why. She was virtue signaling like the vapid little hack that she is. And I don’t believe she had a filter or other mask as she claims. Even if you buy the deco reasoning why the holes? Maybe to breathe easier? That makes more sense and if you zoom in on the mask there is nothing showing beneath that. With that said, my family wears the mask if we know we will be within close contact with people not for us but just out of respect of other people. The data is clear, our family and the overwhelming majority of the population is at virtually little risk of the virus. But it’s a societal thing for us. Protect the most vulnerable and let’s get on with life. Me wearing a mask is not a big sacrifice and I can handle it for the next 6 months. But I sure as hell won’t be wearing it if I’m at a beach or walking outside to go into a store and definitely not in a car. And the Ozark pictures. This is just another vapid media hysteria creation. OH NO! BIG CROWDS OF PEOPLE OUTSIDE HAVING FUN IN THE SUN! The horror! This is where hysteria overrules facts. The 4 surrounding counties have one death in total. The prevalency of the virus in this area is very low. And the fact that it’s outside in the heat, humidity and UV virus makes it a hostile environment for virus transmission. And even if some people got it, the age demographic of the people present here have at least a 99.9% survival rate. I swear, the stupidity of the media runs very deep.

Better across the board And masks aren’t full proof but they definitely help limit the spread and contagion of an airborne virus. We wear them, not because our family fears the virus but out of respect for others if we know we will be in close contact with people.