Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Feb 11, 2020 18:40:41 GMT
On Breakfast this morning the 'experts' were saying it's no worse than flu with a death rate of 1%-2%, and much less severe than SARS. Easily refuted. Even if all the remaining reported cases survive, which is most unlikely, the death rate is already well over 2%. 2% of 43104 cases would be 862. The death toll is already 1018 and counting. Where do they get these 'experts' from? 😁 The WHO  . There are a few assumptions, like up to 100x more people have been infected than have been reported because many people get very mild symptoms and think they just have a cold. The UK super spreader seems to have been very mildly ill himself. It is of course all unverifiable at the moment.
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Post by mrclondon on Feb 11, 2020 20:15:49 GMT
I think timeframe especially is key. If an event that cuts deep into equities is fatal to one's retirement planning, then doesn't that suggest that the equity allocation was too high in the first place for the circumstances? Equities have proved time and again that there doesn't need to be any foreseeable reason to drop like a stone in the short term. Unless one is making the call that equities will not recover even in the long term, which needless to say is a big call! Yourself and others make a similiar point. I'm quoting my asset split below in answer to a different post, but in broad terms my prospective pension income is 3 x my core needs (excluding multiple expensive holidays each year) and could be met entirely from a) moving house b) DB Pensions + state pension c) other investments incl SIPP. Hence why I retired in my late 40's, and am currently living predominately from investment income. My investment strategy has always been based on taking calculated risk, and knowing I should expect to live another 30-35 years at this point means in my view I need to maintain a relatively high equity exposure as a third strand of an overall investment model. I probably only hinted at it in my post yesterday, but my thinking here is based on the fact that an event of global armageddon proportions would have a huge negative impact on all asset values, with all 3 strands of my model impacted as all will in my view be correlated to a mass mortality event. So in conclusion I don't think I was necessarily overweight in equity, but in assets in general at this specific point in time. What was your allocation to equities and what is it now?
| Before | After | | London house | 42% | 42% | | Equity (SIPP+ISA) | 30% | 2% | | Cash | < 1% | 29% | | DB Pension (mostly gilts) | 15% | 15% | | P2P (less expected losses) | 13% | 13% |
Last time I posted similar, I got several comments saying I shouldn't include my house in this analysis. The premise here is that I could release 70%+ of the equity by moving out of London and downsizing to a property more appropriate for my needs. Before the big sell off my equity split was
| UK | 30% | | Global | 19% | | European | 15% | | Far East | 13% | | USA | 8% | | Japan | 8% | | Emerging | 5% | | Natural Resources | 2% |
You forgot to factor in 10% of pensioners dying and not making further claims on funds I know you meant it in jest, but its actually a good point. I said yesterday that both DB schemes are running a huge deficit (both are closed to new members) but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that scheme members are not living anywhere as long as the acturial assumtions on life expectancy which drive the surplus/deficit calc predict. For every member like me that spent his life mostly in a comfortable office, there were many more who spent their lives on the front line exposed to all sorts of nasties which PPE can only mitigate not elimiate completely. I suspect the deficit is an acturial illusion.
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Feb 11, 2020 20:25:49 GMT
I have no intention of dying. Edit: soon anyway. |
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Post by bracknellboy on Feb 11, 2020 20:27:58 GMT
I knew 2% wasn't right, and for the reason I gave. That figure is "naive and misleading" and "flawed" according to this well written article, which offers a much better methodology which properly accounts for the time lag. you also have to factor in that there will be a large number of unreported, mild cases. Rates will only ever be approximate. Having sad that, and with the caveat that not everything is known yet, the consensus is that it is significantly less likely to be fatal than SARS. Correct: but that is trading off higher infection rate for lower mortality rate.
I think the point is: the data is still way too flaky to know. Ironically/sadly I guess the cruise ships could provide a much better "controlled environment" to at least understand the real mortality rates when patients have access to highest quality healthcare. Nonetheless, if it went "pandemic" such that it overwhelmed healthcare systems, then its possible that mortality rate could be chucked in the bin.
At the moment, I'm shifting to the position that I think it is more likely than not that it won't be able to be contained. What that means for actual illness and mortality rates, even if it does go that way, who the hell knows.
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Post by mrclondon on Feb 11, 2020 20:40:57 GMT
I have no intention of dying. Edit: soon anyway. Yeah .... after all the effort I've put in over the last 3 weeks to read and form a view on this, I would be well p*ssed off to die anytime soon. But the reality is I do have longstanding respiratory issues, and whilst otherwise fit and healthy I would likely have difficulties in anything other than a mild case. At least I'm not in China - I read of a guy in Wuhan who sounded to have similiar issues to me reported by his neighbour as a virus suspect and hauled off to quarantine camp when his coughing/shortness of breath was merely normality in his case (as described by his wife).
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Post by bracknellboy on Feb 11, 2020 21:24:59 GMT
Can people stop saying they are 100% equities when they are no such thing. Sure there is such a thing. If Bob has investible assets of X and decides to put 100% into equities, then bob is 100% in equities. Investible assets being the key word. Stuff that's entirely out of your control, such as a pension which is entirely managed by somebody else, doesn't really count as investible assets. You can bang on about it as much as you like, but the pension administrator is not going to change their asset allocation just because you don't like it, your cash is in the company pool along with that of your work colleagues past and present and you get what you get. As normal, completely missed the point of the OPs post. Still, the sound of one's own voice is a wonderous thing.
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michaelc
Member of DD Central
Say No To T.D.S.
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Post by michaelc on Feb 11, 2020 21:38:25 GMT
Whilst I consider a major outbreak all across the UK unlikely, given ppe is currently available and cheap, I decided to buy a respirator and gloves just in case. The respirator I bought said it is good for "organic vapour" but of course I don't know for sure if it would protect me. What I do know is you can test for leaks by doing a simple test and then adjusting the different straps as appropriate.
I do wish the relevant authorities would be more transparent in terms of what they know. e.g. some of them say masks aren't that useful and the Great Unwashed should all wash our hand instead. Health workers wear masks though but apparently that is different as they have had lots of training. Why not share the essence of that training and why it is needed instead of leaving us all to guess? And what about gloves? Why are surgical gloves helpful? Do a million viruses on a fleck of spit instantly die when they land on such gloves?
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Post by bracknellboy on Feb 11, 2020 21:48:07 GMT
Whilst I consider a major outbreak all across the UK unlikely, given ppe is currently available and cheap, I decided to buy a respirator and gloves just in case. The respirator I bought said it is good for "organic vapour" but of course I don't know for sure if it would protect me. So protects you from cow farts ? (as long as said cows are raised on organically certified pastures) 
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Post by bracknellboy on Feb 11, 2020 21:48:36 GMT
Do a million viruses on a fleck of spit instantly die when they land on such gloves? No.
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michaelc
Member of DD Central
Say No To T.D.S.
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Post by michaelc on Feb 11, 2020 21:58:06 GMT
Do a million viruses on a fleck of spit instantly die when they land on such gloves? No. Thanks for that!
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Post by bernythedolt on Feb 12, 2020 0:40:08 GMT
Easily refuted. Even if all the remaining reported cases survive, which is most unlikely, the death rate is already well over 2%. 2% of 43104 cases would be 862. The death toll is already 1018 and counting. Where do they get these 'experts' from? 😁 The WHO . There are a few assumptions, like up to 100x more people have been infected than have been reported because many people get very mild symptoms and think they just have a cold. The UK super spreader seems to have been very mildly ill himself. It is of course all unverifiable at the moment. Well if they are going to massage the figures by inventing new methods of counting(!), there's not much more to be said. The death rate is demonstrably well over 2% right now, whatever spin WHO is putting on it. For SARS, nobody ever invented a 'possible contingent of x thousand sufferers that nobody knows about, but we assume probably exist with mild symptoms somewhere out there'! Calculating the case fatality rate doesn't work that way. For SARS, they took the number of deaths (774) and divided it by the number of known reported cases (8098). That gave the 9.6% fatality rate everyone has recorded. They did not record some concocted figure involving thousands of unknowns, so why do so this time? The only reason I can think they might believe it will fall to <2% is if they are expecting a big breakthrough in treatment soon which will reduce future fatalities once there are (say) a million reported infected. But that's crystal ball territory, not something WHO should be using as their baseline yet. This one has so many parallels with SARS, why would anyone deviate from what was learned back then? Makes no sense to me.
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Post by bernythedolt on Feb 12, 2020 4:04:32 GMT
I've been carrying out some analysis of the number of cases reported these past couple of weeks and there is some encouraging news, I believe. Have we started turning the corner?
One week ago, the best-fit (quadratic) graph to the previous few days of data was an 'upward pointing' parabola (mathematically, its second derivative was positive) which meant the number of new cases being added each day was higher than the day before. This week, however, the best-fit to the last eight days' worth of data has switched to a downward pointing parabola (second order derivative negative). This is excellent news because it suggests the spread of infection has started to slow down.
Perhaps best visualised as follows. On 29th Jan, ~1600 new cases were added. Each day, this figure was steadily growing until it peaked on 4th Feb when 4155 new cases were added. 4th Feb was the turning point. Since that date, the number of daily new cases has started to reduce and we are now back down to the vicinity of ~2000 per day.
Modelling the data allows a prediction to be made. The parabola best fitting the trend of the last eight days indicates the number of known, reported infections (currently ~45,150) should peak at 55,791 on 21st Feb. It must be said that extrapolating 9 days into the future like this is notoriously dicey, because so much can change, but it's a vastly more positive outlook than a week ago. Let's hope this trend continues.
Disclosure: I have a particular vested interest because our daughter and asthmatic husband are flying to Oz via Singapore in the summer. Mrs Dolt and I (in the 'at risk' age group) were due to join them, but I've shelved that pending developments.
My apologies if the media are already reporting this new trend, I have no idea (not been following that closely, preferring my own analysis/instincts!).
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Feb 12, 2020 9:11:03 GMT
The WHO . There are a few assumptions, like up to 100x more people have been infected than have been reported because many people get very mild symptoms and think they just have a cold. The UK super spreader seems to have been very mildly ill himself. It is of course all unverifiable at the moment. Well if they are going to massage the figures by inventing new methods of counting(!), there's not much more to be said. The death rate is demonstrably well over 2% right now, whatever spin WHO is putting on it. For SARS, nobody ever invented a 'possible contingent of x thousand sufferers that nobody knows about, but we assume probably exist with mild symptoms somewhere out there'! Calculating the case fatality rate doesn't work that way. For SARS, they took the number of deaths (774) and divided it by the number of known reported cases (8098). That gave the 9.6% fatality rate everyone has recorded. They did not record some concocted figure involving thousands of unknowns, so why do so this time? The only reason I can think they might believe it will fall to <2% is if they are expecting a big breakthrough in treatment soon which will reduce future fatalities once there are (say) a million reported infected. But that's crystal ball territory, not something WHO should be using as their baseline yet. This one has so many parallels with SARS, why would anyone deviate from what was learned back then? Makes no sense to me. I think most peoples view of the death rate calculation is that it is the number of people who have died divided by the number of people who have had the virus. Deaths are fairly easy to measure, but there will doubtless be a very large number of people who have caught the virus, but who do not appear in the statistics because they only had minor symptoms.
The number of official experts we see on the telly is nowhere near as big as the number of armchair experts we here from on forumns like this. I don't see how it can be remotely helpful when you look at one page on this thread and see estimates ranging from <2% up to 50% for the mortality rate.
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cb25
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Post by cb25 on Feb 12, 2020 9:18:18 GMT
There's a discussion here on the various methods being used to calculate the Coronavirus mortality rate, with comments on their weaknesses. I think the statement "A precise estimate of the case fatality rate is therefore impossible at present" sums it up pretty well. |
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jonno
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nil satis nisi optimum
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Post by jonno on Feb 12, 2020 10:29:53 GMT
I've just heard a report on CNBC that there has been a spike in the U.S. in Google searches for "Beer Virus" and there has been a drop in the sales of a well known Mexican beveridge...........Yes you guessed it CORONA!!!!! This is not a joke  |
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. There are a few assumptions, like up to 100x more people have been infected than have been reported because many people get very mild symptoms and think they just have a cold. The UK super spreader seems to have been very mildly ill himself. It is of course all unverifiable at the moment.
