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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Asset prices are based on forward looking projections of the business, not on current revenues, or even next quarter's revenues. This is why S&P 500 companies trade at an average valuation of 15X their current-year earnings. If anything, they're way oversold already.

Nothing's fundamentally or structurally changed in the US economy. There were no bad mortgages. We hit the brakes for a bit, but before you know it we'll be back up on our feet and working our asses off, and if we're lucky, we'll get some mandatory paid sick days added to employment law out of it.

[edit] well actually, something has fundamentally changed: the cost of borrowing got somehow even lower meaning an eventual recovery may be turbocharged. The Fed is very unlikely to raise rates as we move past this.

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Well right now the trailing 12 month PE average for S&P is 20. So still above historical norm after this 20% drop. I wouldn't say things are oversold, rather everything was way overvalued.

And people are overlooking the fact this is just the herald wave, and probability of a catastrophic 2nd wave this fall/winter is pretty damn high. This isn't going away. This more than likely will move through the population a few times over the next few years until the vulnerable are "sifted through" so to speak. I want to believe in our scientific and technical capabilities but nobody should hold their breath for an effective vaccine in the next year or two. This has the potential to fundamentally and structurally change more than just the economy.

But I feel you..99x out of 100 you're spot on. Unfortunately, it's looking like the potential reality we might be facing is something most can't or don't want to comprehend. It at least deserves real consideration and thought.. we'll get through it and move on, but I don't think people grasp or want to believe what might be to come.

Multiple vaccine candidates are already in clinical trials. It will take 12-18 months, but it seems like a certainty.

fwiw I doubt we'll see a vaccine anytime in the next years.

no doubt China tests very aggressively and trials the drugs on their prison population. They have a head-start because no human rights. (And now they also have more reasons to justify these crimes).

I wouldn't want to know how many were disappeared into body bags while they were still breathing just to keep reported numbers down.

>>"I wouldn't want to know how many were disappeared into body bags while they were still breathing just to keep reported numbers down."

So, you don't want to know, but still you can't avoid tell us.

Do you have any information about this kind of thing going on, or you just dream about it last night?

For a forum of ostensibly intelligent people, it's amusing to see the rise in anti-china sentiment brought about by the coronavirus.

Sure, China has a poor human rights record in many regards. But objectively, their handling of the coronavirus has been phenomenal, especially when one considers its hugely dense population.

And regarding the fake video supposedly showing a live person being body bagged: even Facebook "verified" the video as fake, and you know that.

China's done many things poorly in recent history, but containment of the coronavirus isn't one of them. Resorting to unsubstantiated xenophobia in times like this really says more about you as a person than anything else.

> China's done many things poorly in recent history, but containment of the coronavirus isn't one of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%E6%9D%8E%E6%96%87%E4%BA%...

> Illegal activities (time, location participants and numbers, problems and outcomes):

> Posting untrue statement "7 confirmed SARS cases at Wuhan Hua'nan Fruit and Seafood Market" on the WeChat Group "Wuhan University Clinical Class of 2004" on Dec 30, 2019.

> [We are] now filing an official warning and admonitions to you on the illegal issue of posting untrue statements on the Internet according to the law. Your behavior severely disrupts social order. Your behavior has exceeded the scope permitted by the law and violates the relevant provisions of the Public Security Administration Punishment Law of the People's Republic of China, which is an illegal act!

> Resorting to unsubstantiated xenophobia in times like this really says more about you as a person than anything else.

Give it a rest.

Hospitals in Asia generally demand payment before checkout, so I wouldn't want to find myself a semi-conscious plague patient with no cash left.

What do I mean by demand? They post a guard outside your door until somebody pays the bill in full. God help you if you say you can't pay, especially if there's a lineup of new patients. You actually could get a bag over your head.

If you want to read more about how hospitals work in China, google "big sickness". There's some socialized medicine, but cancer and organ transplant bills are similar to what an uninsured US citizen would face - sign over the house.

> Hospitals in Asia generally demand payment before checkout, so I wouldn't want to find myself a semi-conscious plague patient with no cash left.

America would like a word with you. One of the biggest real risks to spread in America is that 30 million Americans have no health insurance, and can't afford a day off work.

> What do I mean by demand? They post a guard outside your door until somebody pays the bill in full. God help you if you say you can't pay, especially if there's a lineup of new patients. You actually could get a bag over your head.

Hey... just like America!

not to worry my xenophobia is limited to the CCP regime not against the Chinese people. I have a record of criticizing the CCP, the GOP, the AfD, National Rally, and every other political terrorist system out there ... and I was like this long before Covid19 became a topic.

You should find some Uyghur friends and see how this white-washing goes down with them.

This is a global recession, spending is drying up. You may or may not have seen the dot com bust, but this to me looks like that except across the globe. Many companies will die because they rely on cash flow and that will dry up. Restaurants, and entertainment venues will be dead until May 2021, unless we find a vaccine that treats this. As more and more celebrities get infected and possibly die it will hit the psyche a lot more than the financial crisis ever did.

It really is different this time, and it frightens me, not the virus itself but the economic ramifications.

The best case scenario is that summer stops the virus from spreading, panic lessens, and then a treatment is found before September that is effective and quick. Then a vaccine comes out next March 2021 and everyone is happy again.

You're right that it's different, but this is nothing like the dot com bust. People could still do other work when that happened. Also note that equity busts are quite different from credit busts.

This really is a massive bomb under the economy. Credit is stretched by years of low rates and now a lot of things have to stop.

Other commentators hint at postponed spending, which would be good. But many things in the economy do not work that way. If you skip your holiday now, it's not coming back and the hotels and restaurants will not get that money later. Same with a number of other businesses.

You don’t think someone who was forced to cancel their February vacation wouldn’t take an August vacation once the situation sorted itself out?

Some will, but many won't. There's a fair few frictions in that. Say you couldn't get a refund for whatever reason. Or your boss won't give you the time. Or whatever occasion you went for is passed.

It's not that I'm saying it's all lost, but you have to count on some share being lost.

This won't be sorted by August.

Cool, any data or is that just speculation? Either way I was asking a hypothetical question.

It’s more the other direction. What evidence do we have that this will be sorted by August?

There has been no evidence that Cov-2 is anywhere as heat sensitive as influenza. This isn’t “the flu”. It doesn’t have to conform to flu patterns.

Right now the only countries getting this under control are ones that have started social distancing early and left many measures in place.

> Restaurants, and entertainment venues will be dead until May 2021, unless we find a vaccine that treats this.

Just because people over 70 won't be going to them, doesn't mean the rest of us won't be. Besides, once I've had cornavirus - which could well be inevitable - I'll no longer be scared for it and will head back out. So will everybody else.

To be honest, the best way to avoid a severe economic impact is to accept you'll most likely get it, and rather than killing businesses by staying inside, just got on with your life, stay fit and healthy, and hope for the best. You're more likely to be killed driving your car, so carry on living!

So in other words: "who cares, the virus only kills old people who were probably useless to the economy anyway, so business as usual."

I sure hope you don't have any elderly family members. Plenty of people in their 40s have died too

Not what I said. Those most vulnerable should stay at home. No reason for the rest of us too of we are very low risk.

Old people in nursing homes don't get out much, and yet they're the ones that are dying. The fact is that the virus spreads because people don't always die from it, and so they go around spreading it to people who will. Most people probably won't know that they have it until they've spread it to 3 more people.

Your strategy will probably keep you alive, but the same is not guaranteed for many millions of people that are old or with immune system complications.

Well with an R0 of ~2 your speculation of at least 3 is definitely wrong.

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