With frequent air travel and there are plenty of people who still take buses, ubers, subways. People will show up to work sick or having it w/o symptoms yet so unaware.

So it definitely has a lot of room to operate. The U.S. is not anywhere near as safe as you or the avg American thinks. And that's really the most dangerous piece of it is the false sense of security most people have about it.

Of course the US can have its ways to spread, but imo Europe is far worse.

Every European city has people packed in public transportation daily, dense tourist locations, bar/cafe/restaurant culture, and most places don't get warm until May.

I agree with Pinkman that Europe is already screwed. Northern Europe gets more Chinese travelers than northern Italy so it’s very likely they already have more infected. Even if not yet, it’s a lock some Italians already spread the virus to rest of Europe on their travels and it is now a matter of time.

Oh yeah I wasn't arguing that Europe isn't worse off. It definitely is. Just saying Americans aren't safe either.

I am flying so I checked Walgreens CVS etc. They are all sold out of masks indefinitely. If this was airborne HIV we'd all be ****ed.

Seems a lot of people took off work today to prepare.

There were big lines outside of the Costcos around here and they are already sold out of a lot of stuff.

Gonna be a sheitshow for awhile.

Did some digging with contacts who said airlines won't be bailed out if it came to it. So I guess that's less interesting than buying energy and banks when it's time to.

Trump still around 60% to be elected to serve a second term according to the betting. (Free market where anybody can set or take odds). It has not moved much from 2-3 weeks ago.

https://smarkets.com/event/886736/po...lection-winner

For what it's worth I think it's obvious that this thing will be everywhere fairly soon. The US might get it slower than Europe due to lower population density but that's cold comfort. The long incubation period makes it impossible to not spread without total shutdown of inbound travel, which is unrealistic and would be too late at this point anyway.

This virus is already spreading like wildfire undetected in many places among the large portions of the global population without access to good health care. It's impossible for it not to be. Many of those people have already traveled to the US, many others will end up in the US whether we officially lock down the borders or not. Think about what happens when this virus starts spreading among the growing homeless populations in our big cities.

The economic damage will begin to take hold soon, probably in earnest next quarter. Companies will begin laying off staff, more people without access to health care. People who do have access to health care will find that hospitals are completely overrun. If you need to go to the ER for non-COVID-19 reasons there's a significant chance you'll catch it in the waiting room.

I'm not one to panic and find the worst case scenario around every corner but it seems too obvious to me that this is here to stay. The only question left is how bad it will be. The economic impact will just make things worse for the next couple of years. We're a pretty long ways from a bottom in equities. Short term anything can happen. A little bit of good news will cause relief rallies here and there but I'm 100% cash as of this past Tuesday for the foreseeable future.

Wait a month or so till the supply chain from China completely dries up. Then the **** is really going to hit the fan.

Have also switched all my funds to 100% cash as of a week ago.

Regular americans would probably be fine but this virus would def kill off the large homeless populations on West coast.

I wanted to do this but didn't... wish I had the discipline LOL

Why cash and not a bond ETF?

I don't have any experience with bonds so I wanted to give myself a bit of time to explore other options. First order of business was getting out of equities. I've got other things on my plate at the moment so I doubt I'll have any time to explore other investment strats for a few weeks.

Amazon tells employees to pause non-essential travel in U.S. due to coronavirus

Seems about right. My main concern is needing medical care for something unrelated. Pre-corona up here it's 6-10 hours in emerg. In a month from now? lol I can't even imagine.

I don't know how much this whole supply chain China thing is going to happen though. I say it'll be a mixed bag.

If anyone wants an insight into how dependent we are on China"s supply chains this book will probably not help you sleep at night.

Read at your own risk.

https://www.amazon.com/China-Rx-Expo.../dp/1633883817

For what it's worth my company is currently working with a large contract manufacturer in China. Their engineering staff is back to work (in Shanghai at least) but a large portion of their staff at the factory in Shenzhen is still out of work. They're looking to hire replacements. I think they can find replacements pretty quickly and the training process over there probably doesn't take too long.

Only a sample size of 1 but if that's representative then it seems like the country's getting back to work. There will be some shortages of some things over the next couple of months since a good chunk of their manufacturing infrastructure has been shut down for 6 weeks but I am hopeful that things get back to normal there soon.

Of course there's a good possibility that people there are going back to work when they should really still be staying at home. If so it's tough to say what the impact will be. A resurgence of virus cases seems highly probable when people start mingling again, just a question of if it gets bad enough to shut everything down again.

Of all the headlines, imho this one is the most bearish

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-c...-idUSKCN20M124

Yeah the situation is like being economically dependent on Nazi Germany in 1937. It's the dumbest thing ever (the Chinese are even more dangerous thanks to state of technology today and their ideology/plans). Trump is the first leader to try to fix it, and he's been doing a good job of sending signals to move supply chains out of China. The whole global supply chain has become more diversified since Trump started the tariffs. It's not 100% there but the situation is a lot better than it was.

Is there any data to suggest that there is higher recovery and less transmission in WARM hospitals? If the virus is seasonal then maybe heating a hospital to 80+ degrees could help wipe it out?

I wouldn't necessarily advise this as hot temperatures can be dangerous to people with fevers but I would like to know if anyone is studying this so that we can get a prediction on whether it's seasonal or not.

I suppose you could heat up every building on the planet and constantly run humidifiers. That would likely lower transmissions rates somewhat and annoy the hell out of people so they go home faster.

Waiting for summer is easier.

I think increased humidity would actually facilitate transmission not hinder it.

I am hearing that some Chinese firms can restart but are nonetheless not starting and are trying to use the force majeur clause to renegotiate their contracts, sometimes even with government certificates saying they got a force majeur event.

Interesting. Found a related article:

https://www.ft.com/content/bca84ad8-...8-dd0f971febbc