Coronavirus Thread

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GT_EE78

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GT_EE78 said:
33K for for US new cases on 4/7. still below the 4/4 peak.
25K/30K/33K (8.0/8.9/9.0%) averages about 8.6% of the prior days totals which means the rate of doubling is about 8 days, which is better than last week
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32K new cases yesterday 4/8.. 8% of prior day total or 9 day doubling rate is still slowly improving.
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france did good yesterday.Hopefully US/UK death rates will follow soon
upload_2020-4-9_15-28-18.jpeg

Daily percentage of new Corona virus deaths to previous day's total by country. 25% = total deaths double every 3 days, 20% = every 4 days, 15% = every 5 days, 10% = about 1 week, 5% = about 2 weeks.

upload_2020-4-9_15-37-45.jpeg
 

takethepoints

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gtchem05 said:
Here's the Time magazine article: https://time.com/5818134/anthony-fauci-never-shake-hands-coronavirus/

I am not impressed with Dr. Fauci on this one either. Here his the actual quote: “I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you. Not only would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease; it probably would decrease instances of influenza dramatically in this country”

First of all, avoiding handshaking would not dramatically decrease instances of influenza in this country, but even if it would, why in the world has Fauci not been strongly advocating for stopping handshaking for years? Somehow we have a simple thing that could dramatically decrease influenza and its supposed 20,000-40,000 annual deaths (I won't go down that rabbit hole as I have already done so in other posts) in this country and he hasn't been advocating for it? What are ridiculous statement!

I do not know when he last saw a patient, but he certainly is not acting like a doctor who sees them regularly. Despite all the telemedicine happening right now, which is a good thing, doctors still need to examine their patients sometimes. After a doc listens with a stethoscope, looks in a patient's throat, and palpates an abdomen, does he really expect the doctor not to shake hands with the patient?

This is not meant to criticize someone for being old. There are plenty of wonderful, wise, fantastic elderly people out there with a lot to offer, but he is acting as if he has punched his last skin biopsy and the whole world is just going to hell in a hand basket. Not what we need from someone in a leadership role.

Fauci needs to be honest with the American people about what we can expect over the coming months including what precautions are reasonable and what are not. I suspect that by the end of the month he will either have changed his tune or we will be seeing a lot less of him in front of the cameras and microphones.
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It's the old political/media adage: never let a good crisis go to waste. My guess is that Fauci has wanted everybody to stop shaking hands for years, largely because they won't wash their hands regularly enough to stop disease transmission. But trying to get people to discard literally millennia of cultural tradition is hard. Now, we finally have a good in-your-face reason to stop or, at least, curtail the practice. You can't blame Fauci for jumping on it. I would too in his place.

As for honesty and openness from government, your last paragraph tells us why Fauci is so valuable and what the problem is. Hint: it ain't Anthony.

Btw, this is one area where Trump excels; he's a compulsive hand washer and sanitizer and he gets away with shaking hands all the time as a consequence. In fact, if he would advocate for doing that, he would do the country a giant favor. I suspect he doesn't because he thinks that would be unpopular with his adherents.
 

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Looks like the SBA loan law is a big bowl of bureacratic spaghetti. I'm reading things like money you get up front was just slashed due to high demand, so you get it in tranches. (Who would have not forecast high demand? And this is coming from printed money out of the clear blue sky, so how can we not have enough?). Also, there are apparently very complicated organizational control restrictions. Like what about a 500 employee company who operates on their own, but was funded and spun off and is majority owned by its old larger parent company? What about a company that is majority owned by a venture capital fund? All these sorts of things are violating ownership provisions and grinding everything to a halt. The last I have heard, not 1 single American has received a dime of the direct payment and not 1 single company has received a dime from these loans. Sad.
 

takethepoints

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YJMD said:
Yeah. It's a lot easier on paper. First of all, systems of care (at least in the US) are far to fragmented to really collate data effectively. I'm not sure what level of detail a public health department may have, but that's probably the best bet for study and with an established mechanism to do the study. Otherwise, what you are suggesting is research. It requires IRB approval and consideration for consent. And it's likely to be bad research, all things considered. There are an enormous amount of confounders here, and testing practice and overall treatment protocols and systems between various sites is going to be very different. Perhaps gathering retrospective data from a place with earlier outbreak like China and using that could happen now, but there are a lot of problems with that too. If you are suggesting a doctor run their own mini trials, that's dangerous, and it wouldn't be blinded anyway. No way that's in the general sense anywhere near ethical. What clinical guideline other than research would inform who you would offer treatment to and who you wouldn't? And if there was a clinical reason (illness severity, age, comorbidity, etc.), then that even further taints your small sample non-blinded study. But I do guarantee you, to some extent, doctors right now are doing that and using their empirical experience and the experience of their colleagues to guide their decisions. Problem is, getting into the telephone game here, cognitive biases become massively magnified.

Realistically, it might be prudent to recognize that there can be public health crises which need to facilitate the collection of and analysis of data from multiple sites and clinical trialing of treatments which significantly deviate from the usual protocols because the implications of the results are far more urgent. But that's just not set up in the scale we would need right now. Maybe some other country is in better position here.
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We ought to get the mods to put this at the beginning of this thread with a 64 red font saying "Read this, then write". It's great to have a real MD or two commenting here.
 

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bwelbo said:
Looks like the SBA loan law is a big bowl of bureacratic spaghetti. I'm reading things like money you get up front was just slashed due to high demand, so you get it in tranches. (Who would have not forecast high demand? And this is coming from printed money out of the clear blue sky, so how can we not have enough?). Also, there are apparently very complicated organizational control restrictions. Like what about a 500 employee company who operates on their own, but was funded and spun off and is majority owned by its old larger parent company? What about a company that is majority owned by a venture capital fund? All these sorts of things are violating ownership provisions and grinding everything to a halt. The last I have heard, not 1 single American has received a dime of the direct payment and not 1 single company has received a dime from these loans. Sad.
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I applied for it. Will report back on any progress.
 
dtm1997

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bwelbo said:
Looks like the SBA loan law is a big bowl of bureacratic spaghetti. I'm reading things like money you get up front was just slashed due to high demand, so you get it in tranches. (Who would have not forecast high demand? And this is coming from printed money out of the clear blue sky, so how can we not have enough?). Also, there are apparently very complicated organizational control restrictions. Like what about a 500 employee company who operates on their own, but was funded and spun off and is majority owned by its old larger parent company? What about a company that is majority owned by a venture capital fund? All these sorts of things are violating ownership provisions and grinding everything to a halt. The last I have heard, not 1 single American has received a dime of the direct payment and not 1 single company has received a dime from these loans. Sad.
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CNBC has reported multiple instances of small businesses getting PPP loans this week, but it is certainly not getting out as quickly as expected.

Fairly certain that PE/VC backed companies were not going to be eligible from day 1. They are backed by Firms that have deep pockets and a desire to protect their investment.

If you're majority owned by a large company, the large company is expected to support its investment.

These loans are not meant to support deep pockets that are behind a veil of where they sit in the ownership stack.

I do believe the SBA has been moving the goal posts as the situation evolves. This is affecting both the companies seeking funds and the banks trying to deliver them.
 

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dtm1997 said:
CNBC has reported multiple instances of small businesses getting PPP loans this week, but it is certainly not getting out as quickly as expected.

Fairly certain that PE/VC backed companies were not going to be eligible from day 1. They are backed by Firms that have deep pockets and a desire to protect their investment.

If you're majority owned by a large company, the large company is expected to support its investment.

These loans are not meant to support deep pockets that are behind a veil of where they sit in the ownership stack.

I do believe the SBA has been moving the goal posts as the situation evolves. This is affecting both the companies seeking funds and the banks trying to deliver them.
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Is that loans getting approved, or money actually getting to the businesses? I saw a story this morning that said 1/3rd of the money allotted ($350B) had already been spoken for and approved, but they said the money hadn't been transmitted to the businesses yet.

"If you're majority owned by a large company, the large company is expected to support its investment."
"These loans are not meant to support deep pockets that are behind a veil of where they sit in the ownership stack."

See, that's exactly where things get sticky. What about if its a 300 person restaurant, and the owner is worth a couple million. At what point does his loan get disqualified because he has enough money to pay his employees out of his own pocket? And what does that really have to do with anything? Do we really want to get to the point where we run companies and people bankrupt before we loan them money when its the government's fault by directive that their company was shut down in the first place?

What if you're a venture capital company and you own a majority stake in 50 companies. Do we really expect them to bail out all 50 companies in unison - think about how much money that is. And this isn't their fault in the first place and has nothing to do with them.

Lets say you're a 500 person company and a large company owns a majority stake in you. What does that bigger company's balance sheet need to look like before approving the loan? What about the current state of that company? Just because they're a bigger company doesn't mean they are doing well right now.

These are all the reasons why these sorts of well meant programs fail in a pile of dust. States can pay unemployment in less than 1 week of getting fired. We should have replaced their paycheck entirely for a certain period of time. That way they could still pay their bills. You wouldn't need to have 1,000 other programs around loan forgiveness, bailing out those companies who aren't getting paid, trying to figure out how to give companies money to not fire employees, and so on. This is way way too complicated.
 

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684Bee said:
I applied for it. Will report back on any progress.
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I applied for it as well...and have already modified it and sent it back in.....my banker tells me one of his other customers had it kicked back because two figures did not agree...by $0.01!

Nevertheless, it has been MUCH smoother than the ObamaCare website roll-out, and with less overhead put in place!
 
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bwelbo said:
Is that loans getting approved, or money actually getting to the businesses? I saw a story this morning that said 1/3rd of the money allotted ($350B) had already been spoken for and approved, but they said the money hadn't been transmitted to the businesses yet.

"If you're majority owned by a large company, the large company is expected to support its investment."
"These loans are not meant to support deep pockets that are behind a veil of where they sit in the ownership stack."

See, that's exactly where things get sticky. What about if its a 300 person restaurant, and the owner is worth a couple million. At what point does his loan get disqualified because he has enough money to pay his employees out of his own pocket? And what does that really have to do with anything? Do we really want to get to the point where we run companies and people bankrupt before we loan them money when its the government's fault by directive that their company was shut down in the first place?

What if you're a venture capital company and you own a majority stake in 50 companies. Do we really expect them to bail out all 50 companies in unison - think about how much money that is. And this isn't their fault in the first place and has nothing to do with them.

Lets say you're a 500 person company and a large company owns a majority stake in you. What does that bigger company's balance sheet need to look like before approving the loan? What about the current state of that company? Just because they're a bigger company doesn't mean they are doing well right now.

These are all the reasons why these sorts of well meant programs fail in a pile of dust. States can pay unemployment in less than 1 week of getting fired. We should have replaced their paycheck entirely for a certain period of time. That way they could still pay their bills. You wouldn't need to have 1,000 other programs around loan forgiveness, bailing out those companies who aren't getting paid, trying to figure out how to give companies money to not fire employees, and so on. This is way way too complicated.
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  • Loans are getting approved. Here's an example - https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/04/...on-race-to-adapt-to-coronavirus-outbreak.html
  • OceanFirst Bank CEO stating they've disbursed funds - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/08/hea...f-loans-due-to-coronavirus-bank-ceo-says.html
  • A 300-person restaurant with an owner that's worth a couple of million bucks, even if he had that net worth in cash, would 100% be eligible for this program and should 100% apply for it. That said, they must also make the hard decision about how to apply those funds to their business, considering the funds are meant to support paychecks primarily, along with rent, utilities, and interest on loans. There is a risk that will make the loan an actual loan, as opposed to forgiven.
  • VC & PE Firms have been AWASH with cash & capital commitments for many years, to the point where they had more funds than they knew what to do with. Keep in mind that these firms invest in two different kinds of businesses. VC-backed companies, typically early stage that can pivot & adapt. PE-backed companies are typically more mature and they're going to have to make some tough decisions. In either case, they have deep pocketed investors that need to decide on the quality of their business investments and if they're worth protecting.
  • A 500-person company, majority owned by a large company, is essentially on par with a PE-backed Company in my opinion. Also, the SBA applications take in to account ownership stakes and affiliated companies. The 500-person company would likely be affiliated with the larger company, increasing the employee base out of eligibility. That's my POV, not necessarily fact.
  • Ramping up unemployment benefits vs. lending to companies is a new comment. Not sure I'm going to jump in on a side philosophically, but there is merit to what you're saying, as well as merit to having small businesses receive help.
ETA: I can't begin to tell you how fluid the whole situation has been.
 

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dtm1997 said:
  • Loans are getting approved. Here's an example - https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/04/...on-race-to-adapt-to-coronavirus-outbreak.html
  • OceanFirst Bank CEO stating they've disbursed funds - https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/08/hea...f-loans-due-to-coronavirus-bank-ceo-says.html
  • A 300-person restaurant with an owner that's worth a couple of million bucks, even if he had that net worth in cash, would 100% be eligible for this program and should 100% apply for it. That said, they must also make the hard decision about how to apply those funds to their business, considering the funds are meant to support paychecks primarily, along with rent, utilities, and interest on loans. There is a risk that will make the loan an actual loan, as opposed to forgiven.
  • VC & PE Firms have been AWASH with cash & capital commitments for many years, to the point where they had more funds than they knew what to do with. Keep in mind that these firms invest in two different kinds of businesses. VC-backed companies, typically early stage that can pivot & adapt. PE-backed companies are typically more mature and they're going to have to make some tough decisions. In either case, they have deep pocketed investors that need to decide on the quality of their business investments and if they're worth protecting.
  • A 500-person company, majority owned by a large company, is essentially on par with a PE-backed Company in my opinion. Also, the SBA applications take in to account ownership stakes and affiliated companies. The 500-person company would likely be affiliated with the larger company, increasing the employee base out of eligibility. That's my POV, not necessarily fact.
  • Ramping up unemployment benefits vs. lending to companies is a new comment. Not sure I'm going to jump in on a side philosophically, but there is merit to what you're saying, as well as merit to having small businesses receive help.
ETA: I can't begin to tell you how fluid the whole situation has been.
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Yea I wasn’t saying I disagreed the spirit of your opinion on who gets the money. My point was that the process to ferret that out equitably would be very complicated.
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That is a Billion dollar bank, and they’ve dispersed $3.7m in the entire first week. That’s pretty scary.
 

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I live in a 500,000 person county in South Carolina. We’ve been seeing new cases increase about 10%/day as best I can remember. It went like 245, 270, 305...and then today it hit 315. All this is from memory, but it slapped me in the face today - we had almost no new cases. I wonder what other areas are seeing today.
 
dtm1997

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bwelbo said:
Yea I wasn’t saying I disagreed the spirit of your opinion on who gets the money. My point was that the process to ferret that out equitably would be very complicated.
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That is a Billion dollar bank, and they’ve dispersed $3.7m in the entire first week. That’s pretty scary.
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There's a massive amount of application data being collected by the banks in order to facilitate the loans and the earliest applications were taken in last Friday morning.

Leading up to those first applications, there was literally no infrastructure in place to accept and process the applications, because the program didn't exist.

The process is not just raising your hand and receiving a check. There'd be a lot of bankers not ready to pull their hair out in their attempts to help clients if it was that easy.
 

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ole Miss has cancelled all in person camps, conferences and classes through Aug 1.


The State of Arkansas cancelled all college summer camps and in person classes yesterday.
 
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