Bottomline upfront: Buy this for yourself, your parents and your grandparents or whoever needs it. That is my investment advice of the day.
Why?
Asymptomatic patients may have hypoxemia and not know it. This $20 device will allow you to monitor your oxygen level in your blood and if you go under 90% you better see a doctor. Organ damage is occurring in people with no symptoms or mild symptoms due to lack of enough oxygen getting to body organs over an extended period of time.
But don’t take my word for it. What do I know…
The Infection That’s Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients 20 April 2020 NYT
They are finding very low oxygen levels in those who fill fine, this leads to organ damage since it is not being treated soon enough as patients wait until symptoms are bad to go to the hospital.
Coronavirus attacks lining of blood vessels all over the body, Swiss study finds
Researcher says virus enters ‘defence line’ and causes circulation problems, which can lead to multiple organ failure.
Which may explain the next article’s findings. It seems many more people are dying than normal of non-coronavirus attributed deaths. In other words, pneumonia may not be the only outcome of the virus leading to deaths…
25,000 Missing Deaths: Tracking the True Toll of the Coronavirus Crisis 21 April 2020 NYT
How are we doing in America?
Dr. Hussman ran some models on expected deaths from the coronavirus and found we are NOT on track for the most optimistic outcome in America. I would guess late to lockdown in many states is the reason since the optimistic view requires effective social distancing.
As many commentators have pointed out… by “opening up the economy” at the end of April when we are still near “peak new cases” you can expect another explosive outcome in about 10 days in those states. For those who think we should let it run its course and obtain “herd immunity” you might want to consider the following new information coming in.
And the good news just keeps coming…
Recovered, almost: China’s early patients unable to shed coronavirus
Those patients all tested negative for the virus at some point after recovering, but then tested positive again, some up to 70 days later, the doctors said. Many have done so over 50-60 days.
Permanently Damaged 18 April 2020 Dauerhaft Geschadigt
All of them were not severe cases, their illnesses were five to six weeks ago and they are considered to have recovered. But they can no longer dive.”The damage to the lungs is irreversible,” he said… “This is shocking, we don’t understand what’s going on here…”
And maybe the scariest if true…
Coronavirus’s ability to mutate has been vastly underestimated, and mutations affect deadliness of strains, Chinese study finds 20 April 2020 SCMP
- The most aggressive strains of Sars-CoV-2 could generate 270 times as much viral load as the least potent type
- New York may have a deadlier strain imported from Europe, compared to less deadly viruses elsewhere in the United States
Which brings us to my lane – the investing environment.
My base case is a Depression that will be Minor or Great depending on politically determined policies. A minor depression is based on much stronger demand-side support in policy and is also based on the best case virus scenario of opening up the economy over the summer and no second wave. We have neither today.
A depression will have its own negative outcomes in terms of health as well as our society, so it is understandable to argue to reopen the economy. But the timing has to be right. And I do believe we can bridge the economy to the other side with the right policies – again, not happening yet.
My investment advice has moved from active, to defensive to now protective. Protect your funds until we can go active again. Protecting is not passive folks. You may have to take action at the right time.
As for the best case consider…
CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating 22 April 2020 USA Today
Now the truth is not allowed, especially when you are trying to re-open the economy…
No, the CDC director was not misquoted, he was telling us the truth. Excerpts from the article:
The CDC director said his concerns about a second wave have largely fallen on deaf ears.
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”
And Fauci adds:
He said it was “a reasonable assumption that when you have an antibody that you are protected against reinfection. But that has not been proven for this particular virus.”
“We don’t know how long that protection – if it exists – lasts. Is it one month? Three months? Six months? A year?” Fauci said.
My opinion on re-opening the economy is that it has to be done with an informed public so they can make the best decisions for themselves and hopefully maintain social distancing the best they can. The problem of course will be business owners and managers forcing workers back to work before it is safe which is already happening.
So we have a virus that appears to be doing permanent damage to those with minor illnesses, and possibly killing more than we know from organ damage due to hypoxemia due to an attack on the circulatory system. And we don’t know if you can develop immunity. And there may be multiple variants of the virus with some worse coming your way. So opening the economy may led to a greater economic failure in the long run.
I am not sure the decision is one of choosing the “lesser of two evils”. It may be simply we are going to have to deal with two evils regardless: the virus and an economic depression. It can be done.
Invest safe, Live safe
Michael Bond
BTW: Globally only 2-3% have been infected and recovered so far. It is still early in this pandemic.
PS. I just looked at Amazon. The prices doubled to $40 on average for the finger devices since I bought mine.
TSP & Vanguard Smart Investor serving serious and reluctant investors
Categories: Perspectives