I didn’t really follow the cookie thing.

Think about an extreme case: Treasury issues and Fed prints $10TR USD per year, year after year, and it just gets handed to people to do whatever they want with it. The world is quickly awash in USD. The entire US bond market is about $40TR, the US stock market is about $30TR, all residential real estate in the US is worth about $30TR, al commercial real estate is worth about $40TR. So Fed prints USD equal to about 7% of all assets in the US, each year - and about 1-2X the turnover (sales volume) per year. Seems likely that inflation would take off. Too many dollars chasing too few assets.

How extreme is that? This year Treasury will probably issue $5TR in bonds, and Fed will probably print most of that.

Even before the virus, Treasury was going to issue over $1TR in bonds (deficit was running $1TR) and even a garden variety recession would have pushed that to $2TR. The Fed was holding short rates down by buying T bills, and the market was holding long rates down because it anticipated a recession.

There were some signs that Treasury was having trouble selling those bonds. The bid to cover ratio on Treasury auctions was getting low (sometimes 2-3X oversubscribed, normal is 4-5X). Primary dealers and banks were full of Treasury inventory. The repo market was getting stressed, impressively so in Sep 2019.

So I think printing $10TR is probably too much (as in, bad stuff happens), printing $1TR is not clearly sustainable long term but not clearly unsustainable either. How about $5TR? I don’t know, and hope to not find out.

The latest from Sweden:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/21/sweden-600000-coronavirus-infections-in-stockholm-by-may-1-model-estimates/#51dfa29f78d6

If this is accurate, then less than 0.3% of those infected have died. The 600,000 figure is for Stockholm, but the 1756 dead figure is for the whole country. I presume fewer than 1756 residents of Stockholm have died. So the figure would be less than 0.3%.

The population of Stockholm is 974,000, so about two thirds have been infected. Some say this is the point at which herd immunity kicks in. We should see in the next couple of weeks or so.

Also, if you scale the number dead up to the US population, it would mean 55,000 dead in the US - at herd immunity? That's roughly equivalent to a normal flu season. If this is the case, then this year's flu season could have been double normal, and called a very bad, even disastrous, flu season. But worth nuking the economy? Sweden doesn't think so.

Well then, when are you moving out?

It looks like we're smashing the US economy to save as many lives as possible. Pretty high price, IMO. Especially so, since it's all based on speculation and models.

If the US goes, so goes the world. Heck, oil could even go negative.

Naaaaaaah! Just kidding!

1022 deaths in Stockholm. .17%

That 1000 to 1 won't scale to the US.

The US has 45,000 deaths today. We will be at 55,000 by Monday.

NY state has 250,000 cases. At 1000 to 1 that is 250,000,000 cases within a population of 20,000,000.

i think you mean to say; The US has 45,000 deaths to date. Not today.

Would have been a BAD day.

It was the worst day ever at 2804

Check the link again.

“ Update, April 22: Sweden’s Public Health Agency has formally withdrawn this report following the discovery of an error.”

Takes you to https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/22/sweden-health-agency-withdraws-controversial-coronavirus-report/#1538a2814349

Everyone is in such a damn hurry to get info out they don't check the results and then release questionable and inaccurate data. That only leads to more confusion.

How often do the science guys get to make fame and prestige outside of their own niche circle?

Yea, folks should be doing better, but I get being human...and a scientist working away and nobody really cares till it actually matters to everyone.

Case and Point:

Bill Nye, The “Science” Guy has a BS in Mechanical Engineering but is revered as THE point of contact when it comes to Global Warming. He hosts a PodCast that educates the public about this disease. In fact his engineering degree got him the position as CEO of the Planetary Society, an organization founded by Carl Sagan, who incidentally had a PhD in astronomy.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, a cardio-thoracic surgeon, is Fox News’ expert on COVID-19. This idiot stated that there would ONLY be a 2-3% increase of morbidity if we sent our kids back to school. Here is his quote:

"Let’s start with things really critical to the nation. Schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice piece in the Lancet arguing that the opening of schools may only cost us 2-3% in terms of total mortality. Any life is a life lost, but to get every child back into school where they’re safely being educated, being fed, and making the most out of their lives with a theoretical risk on the backside — it might be a trade-off some folks would consider."

I won’t even get started on Dr. Phil. It would be nice to eliminate the noise and only get solid information from people who ACTUALLY understand epidemiology.

Hmm, I think I have to agree with the "idiot" Dr. Oz. After all, it's not the kids in danger of dying but the compromised old and sick who the kids will infect who could possibly succumb. What's more important, our future (the kids) or saving a tiny percentage of our elderly who were near to checking out before the epidemic? the resurgence of this virus will most likely happen before a vaccine is developed anyway so in the end perhaps everyone needs to get sick and develop their own immunity. We've already trashed our economy for years to come, should we trash our future too? with every other specie of flora or fauna on this planet the old and the weak get culled out by either a predator or a disease. Should we consider ourselves exempt? And with less than 2 percent of the old and immune deficient actually dying from the virus could you call it a culling? Maybe we should send the kids back to school and everyone back to work and try to save what we haven't already destroyed.

At least it's back on topic. Last week I saw this nice essay, written by a friend of a friend in Stockholm (website link here, but is continually updated so must scroll down to April 16: https://thepointmag.com/quarantine-journal/?fbclid=IwAR3D1ROAtqf_mxtGs2-xRKOJEwzqIxCrr1ZD4iVTSUu2CPKpTFRMAGdIb3E )



The Outlier

April 16, 2020

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN—My best friend lives in Auburn, Alabama. On the phone back in mid-March, she described having woken up that morning feeling a sort of grief. She reminisced about a party in someone’s cramped apartment, kids frolicking, plates of finger food going around. People leaning into each other as they small-talked. “When will that be possible again?” she asked. There was a noticeable crack in her voice that made me conscious of the physical distance between us. Last time I gave her a hug was three years ago.

She and her husband were on day five of lockdown with their three kids. She did not know how long it would last, but feared that it would go on for months. “That’s terrible,” I said. “I can’t believe they’re doing this to everybody just like that, and with no timeline.” She gave me stats and facts and said, “You wait and see, soon it’ll be you too.”

Now we’re two weeks into April. Our kids, three and five, are still in preschool. We see friends outdoors on the blessed warm and sunny days, and on cold and windy ones. The past few weeks I’ve seen more of the beautiful woods around Stockholm than in my previous ten years here. A few days ago, I had a job meeting, face to face, in a coffee shop.

Right now, some things are banned: visiting homes for the elderly and gathering in crowds over fifty people. Universities and high schools have closed and transitioned into online teaching. But the rest of the measures come in the form of recommendations. People with symptoms and people over seventy are asked to avoid social contact. We are asked to not go to parties, weddings, funerals or christenings. We are asked to avoid travel. We are asked to keep a distance at all occasions, in public transport, in stores, gyms and restaurants. We are asked to work from home if we can. We are admonished to do many things differently and conscientiously, but there are only a few things we are strictly forbidden from doing.

In my conversation with my friend I felt conflicted, and in the weeks since, I’ve seen that very conflict played out in social media. (As I think someone posted on Facebook: if you think your emotional life has a unique structure, just go on Facebook.) Talking to my friend, what was odd was how naturally it came to me to think in terms of a we that was responding to this crisis. An “us Swedes” kind of we. As in, here in Sweden we are responding to this crisis together, guided by concerns recognizably ours. In contrast to my friend’s almost panicky reaction at that point, I felt safe and protected. And—here we come to the tricky part—a sense of pride arose in me.

Our state epidemiologist, who is now a national celebrity, holds a press conference every day, giving sensible answers to tough questions, and acknowledging when he has no answer to give. We gasp after the words of this dry and humble scientist-bureaucrat as if they let oxygen in to our lungs.

“You wait and see.” My friend’s ominous remark came from a place of ominous feeling. But I can’t shake it off. Neither can a good portion of the we that is supposedly responding with poise and reason together. We have a nagging sense that perhaps this strategy will turn out to be disastrous.

The world is paying attention to the so-called Swedish experiment. Reading the reporting, I almost get a sense that other countries are rooting for the Swedish strategy to fail. If this comparative openness works about as well as lockdowns in other countries, the rest of the world will have endured imprisonment for nothing. That’s how the drama looks anyway.

The state epidemiologist claims that our strategy is, in fact, not so dramatically different from that of other countries. The whole world is experimenting, he emphasizes. No one knows what effects measures such as school closings will have, long-term.

As a family our life is limited but with a considerable space for judgment calls. My three-year-old daughter had a runny nose for weeks, and when I took her outside to play I carried her all the way down three flights of stairs in our apartment building, giving her strict instructions not to touch anything. After a few days of that treatment, she looked up at me with a pitiful face: “Why am I corona all the time, mom?” I worry that my daughter’s eternally dripping nose might kill our next-door neighbor, who is in her nineties and still, bless her, goes out for a daily stroll. I fear ending up one of those who sank this glorious ship just when it had set off on its virgin journey.

The “we” that emerged when I talked to my friend is a fragile one. It is currently being boosted by uncouth boasting. Swedes show solidarity! Swedes trust the government! Our government trusts the bureaucrats! We trust science! And here comes the worst one I’ve seen so far: Swedes can think! A great confluence of circumstances is, in this time of fear, understood as revelatory of great national character. It is, frankly, scary. To find it working in me, to find myself clinging to this we even more than to the words of our high priest, the state epidemiologist, is confusing.

Why we are now caught up in what sometimes strikes me as a strange race against the rest of the world is not clear to anyone. I’m not saying there aren’t reasons. Our state epidemiologist has plenty of them, and his delivery is impeccable. But the workings, the cogs and wheels, of the state machinery are not exhausted by those reasons. I’m not sure who is doing what for what reasons, and whether there are sensible ones, even eminently sensible ones, that are being set aside and that will return to haunt us as the curve starts to look increasingly like a ski-jumping slope.

If it doesn’t, I will be relieved. But I will also, in spite of myself, probably be proud.

CDC has a web site

If folks get their info from the CDC, GREAT!

I am actively involved with the California Air National Guard and our response to the disease.

The amount of inaccurate information out there is amazing. I wish folks would go to the CDC.

For Dr Idiot, oh sorry Oz, to say an increase of 2-3% of morbidity to get the economy back on track is callus, and does nothing to instill calm and confidence.

As of April 22,2020 there are 851,789 confirmed positive cases in the US. Dr. Oz’s assessment that 3% additional mortality is acceptable to get everything back on track. That is 25,554 people he is willing to sacrifice. I’m not comfortable with that.

I’d rather hear from a real expert. . . yes that would include the CDC.

38,000 US deaths annually in car crashes. Should we stop driving?

After limitations on speed limits to 20 mph, driving only for essential travel, and all cars must be a mile apart we get to 38,000 deaths.

When you make someone else crash into a tree while you are watching The Bachelor, yes, we should stop driving.

New York City has avg about 4000 deaths for past months of April. All deaths others then terrorist acts. Tsunami or earthquake are included. Highest April in the last 20 years is 4607 in 2001. Last year available in database was 2018 with 3903.

Coronavirus alone has accounted for over 7,000 deaths alone in New York city this April and the month isn't over.

You can use this national database to check past NYC by month.
https://wonder.cdc.gov/controller/datarequest/D76;jsessionid=32BB54CB6DEF34844C2E42B49C0C8778

I hear ya!

But it is hard to stop stupidity.

NY is the exception in this country. This could be due to the half a million who took part of their Chinese New Year celebration, or it could be that they commute packed in metal tubes.

It has been suggested that if SF 49ers had won the super bowl that the ensuing party/parade would have spread the virus fast and wide in the bay area too.

One thing that seems strange to me is the timing. We are told this takes 2 weeks to show in a new carrier; yet the peak was some 4 weeks out past the shutdown start. This suggests that this shut down is not nearly as effective as was sold, and suggests that this transmits much much easier and wider than earlier projected. ...and also lower % get gravely ill than earlier projected.

IOW it seems that this virus must bounce between a at least a couple healthy people (on average) before it finds a old or frail person.