It’s Official: We’ve Got A Bear Market And A Pandemic
Ladies and gentlemen, we've got ourselves an "official" pandemic.
That's according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who (sorry) spoke at a press briefing on Wednesday.
"All countries can still change the course of this pandemic", he said. "If countries detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilize their people in the response, those with a handful of cases can prevent those cases becoming clusters and those clusters becoming community transmission".
Suffice to say equi
About damn time. Price discovery ahoy! This hasn’t been a panicked crash but a rational deflating of overheated expectations. Markets are functioning well and banks remain well capitalized. Provided this remains the case, those with the cash and the chutzpah are going to have a field day.
With US ZIRP about warp the liquidity continuum, keep your eye on opportunities to buy high margin/ROE, under-levered companies with the ability to continue or even increase large-scale buybacks though this retrenchment (cough MSFT cough).
In retrospect, perhaps the coughing was in poor taste given the circumstances.
You did that on purpose.
Do you know if this is true?
“The White House held dozens of meetings about coronavirus response that excluded government experts because the discussions were unnecessarily classified over the objections of HHS Secretary Alex Azar, reports Reuters. Experts were not just barred from speaking openly about what we knew about the emerging pandemic. Apparently, they weren’t even allowed in the room.”
it’s Reuters, so it’s at least some semblance of true
What we have is the opposite of price discovery
Missing from this post was any mention of Chicken running around with their heads cut off unless H…. was being facetious when he wrote this
Azar was pouring cold water on the idea that people can get a covid19 test at the local RiteAid. He wants the doctors as gatekeepers. AMA is the most successful union in the nation
Despite the administration’s claims to the contrary, the tests are still not widely available and we’ve been forced to be pretty selective when deciding which patients to test. As it stands, we’re basically limited to testing hospitalized patients who have been ruled out for flu and other respiratory viruses and folks with high risk professions (first responders, health care workers, etc.) As the capacity for processing samples increases, we’ll certainly broaden our testing.
Additionally, testing is currently more logistically complicated than you may assume. The current tests require a sinus swab to run. Collecting a sample is an “aerosol generating procedure” since it makes essentially everyone cough or sneeze when it’s done. To safely collect a sample, you need gloves, a gown, a face shield, and an N-95 respirator which are in short supply. Even the large outpatient lab chains are having difficulty doing outpatient testing as a result of logistical challenges. Put simply, your local pharmacy does not have the personnel or equipment necessary to collect and handle samples safely.
Trying to put this at the feet of physicians, and the AMA (which isn’t a union by the way) is patently ridiculous. The AMA doesn’t bear responsibility for rapidly developing and rolling out testing kits, that’s the role of federal agencies like the CDC and HHS. Furthermore, up until like two days ago we needed express permission from the state department of health to run a test on anyone. Finally, private labs at places like UW have been having a very difficult time getting their own testing going due to delays in approval from the federal government.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/many-private-labs-want-do-coronavirus-tests-they-re-facing-n1156006
TLDR: it’s not the AMA keeping you from getting a test. It’s the incompetence of the Trump administration.
Oh, great. Now everyone will know. Tomorrow should be a ride.
H-Man, that Cat 5 hurricane is about a mile off the coast and intensifying. Fortunately or unfortunately, the POTUS team will tell us tonight at 9:00pm how we deal with that monster. If there are no payroll cuts, payment for medical expenses for COVID19, sick leave compensation, and a credit facility for SME’s, then run for the doors. Now the bad news, even if that relief is provided, it will be biggly ugly.
Wow. Who could expect this?
just about anyone with a working brain…
/s