5 University of Tampa students have also tested positive. All those spring breakers returning home after being shoulder to shoulder in Florida… fun times ahead indeed!
Lol we ain’t doing even a quarter of the measures that SK put in place. That ship has sailed.
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The stock market is not the economy and I would not be surprised to see a 40-60% drop from the ~30k high. In fact we may hit the 40% drop this week. And the market was very expensive from my
perspective anyway. Many high PEs and many popular stocks today that pay no dividends. But Im
not too rattled by any of that.
You can’t dictate to a virus the terms of an economic
recovery or rebound timeline. Be prepared it may require
future “shutdowns” as well if the virus reignites across population regions. Perhaps by then we will at least have available rapid and accurate testing to localize quarantines. Mimic successful countrys for dealing with this. As someone on here pointed out, much easier to revive a dead economy than dead people.
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Obviously, you place people’s life and safety over economic gains. It’s an easy decision
With that said, the popular common knowledge, for both personal finance and businesses, is to set aside enough for a six month emergency fund to cover necessary expenditures.
I know many people, and businesses, have not or will never do this but this is exactly why it is recommended by 100% of financial planners. For times like this.
“Still, the business lesson of the 1918 Spanish flu, if there is one, was that several weeks of public closures didn’t do lasting macroeconomic damage.”
Not sure in this case.
This doctor explains why over reacting gives better outcomes than under reacting does — (spoiler: it’s just simple math and common sense) — and talks about what happened in St. Louis did (shelter in place) vs. Philadelphia did (went ahead with parades) in 1918.
On a side note: I’m not sure what “the economy” means but I do know what overwhelmed hospitals and triaging people over 80 means.
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In response to the thread title. It reminded me of this. Good ol’ Monty Python. A much needed laugh in these tense days.
Stopping the Coronavirus near term is not a reasonable objective, but just like the weak pandemic of the Swine flu, flattening it out over 2 years and having the infections and deaths be more reasonable overtime and less of an overwhelming burden on the health care system is the objective so that the economy can continue versus breaking it with millions of job losses that could make the Great Recession look small.
Here is an article on what S. Korea did with their testing and the analysis of the data to address hot pockets and to quarantine and then to isolate those infected and then apply data collection and analysis to trace make through the paths of those infected to help others that may have crossed their paths to alert of the potential for infection. Unlike China that refused to share much, S. Korea is sharing their approach of testing and data collection and analysis. The article is purely about the testing and data analysis aspects and it doesn’t touch on S. Korea’s other object to keep their economy rolling with significant stimulus except to the comment by their medical professionals that they are not China and cannot shut down cities like China did.
Sure, the stock market isn’t the economy, but it is the main engine for corporations to raise capital for public companies and create wealth in society. It also reflects the health of the economy and the health of publically listed corporations.
If you don’t take care of both the Coronavirus and the economy, America and the world will have lost the game. You can’t beat the Coronavirus and ditch the economy and vice versa is also true. You have to win on both fronts, otherwise we lose.
The idea is not to stop the virus but to keep it at bay the best we can in order to keep hospitals from putting up no vacancy signs.
Think anti domino effect. Social distancing removes dominos. That’s what you want when you’re trying to deal with a virus running rampant with no vaccine in a year.
Full hospitals will have an effect on the economy too, I’m thinking because there goes your workforce. BTW, it’s not only affecting old people.
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Of course, that is why I am behind the idea of balance. S. Korea’s own approach and validated by Kim Woo-Joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University was quoted in the article that they are a democratic republic unlike China and what they had to implement was a balance. The article was light on the economic actions they have taken, but they implemented a large injection stimulus for them and focused on maintaining their economy also.
The problem with saying we should implement the SK strategy, is how far behind we are at this point. SK, Taiwan both took very strong positions at the beginning of the outbreak thus where successful in containment.
Everyone else in many countries are in damage mitigation now.
All we can learn from SK now is how to be better prepared for these things. What everything is showing is the swifter and stronger a government reacts at the beginning the better your outcomes are. Governments have to strangle these things in the crib. Otherwise every mitigation strategy after is more costly.
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I will just throw out there that the stock market was inflated and due for a large correction soon. Many signs were pointing to a recession at the end of this year or start of next year. That is why you see these crazy drops, the virus sped everything up and made it worse. All the wealthiest people had their finger on the button to dump stock already and went all out when this became a pandemic.
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Comments like this just reinforce how out of touch some people are with the working class population. Many of these people try to save and do what they can, but will never have a financial planner in their lives. They simply try to save what they can, while raising families and living their lives.
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You don’t need a financial planner to know you need an emergency fund. Most Americans can’t handle a $1K emergency though.
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You missed the point. Most people do not make enough money to be able to use a financial planner. Most know they need savings, but they have to pay rent first and they don’t always have money for that…
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That’s true, Randy, but I think a significant percentage of people barely make a living wage (or don’t make a living wage). Saving is not possible.
I’m guessing a bunch of these types of people are going to be facing catastrophe if they get sick. A hospital stay could wipe out any savings in a day, and any sort of property/equity. It’s too bad we pretty much eliminated discharge through consumer bankruptcy in the 2000s.
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When South Korea states they are desiring and planning to share their strategy to other countries to be implemented now and not at the next pandemic a decade or more from now. South Korea is currently planning for another potential wave themselves. We may have infections for 2 years. What is preventing us or other countries implementing their Coronavirus strategy although later than they did?
As quoted from the article "Kim says medical doctors are also planning to share details of the clinical features of COVID-19 cases in the country in forthcoming publications. “We hope our experience will help other countries control this COVID-19 outbreak.”
Update with some actions SK are taking on the economic side. All these Asian massive cities have taken aggressive actions and mainly smart actions to control the virus, but they have also kept their economies going to minimize the effects of two disasters.
Well Houston has this going for us:
Who knew Houston was a safer place in a pandemic.
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Sure wish the TP would return!
It looks like this really will come in wave as infections will rise once you lift social distancing. We really need to come up with an effective treatment in the next couple of weeks…and a working vaccine not too long after that.