China Corona virus

5030 · Feb 24, 2020

keep wondering about the fate of the 'Pacific Princess'. I cannot see where anyone in the right mind would ever board her again. Wonder if she winds up at the 'ship breakers' in India?

In fact, I wonder about all the cruise lines in general. Bad investment today.

California · Feb 24, 2020

sd455dan said:
... looks like the market finally took notice of the Virus spread

DOW down over a 1000 points this morning ...

Some blind luck here. Last week my wife moved the balance out of of her employer's-plan IRA, into our joint Fidelity master account. She wanted to re-invest this new Fidelity IRA into mutual funds similar to what she had chosen in the employer's fund. At the moment its parked as cash.

I talked her out of re-investing immediately, lets see where this Coronavirus thing is going ... Looks to me that she luckily cashed out at a peak in the market that won't be repeated soon.

Me, I'm watching Tesla's stock decline. Short term, losing components from China and losing sales there is going to hurt them. Long term, several years, I think this will be the Apple stock of this decade so I'm waiting to buy. We shall see ...

BRMyers · Feb 24, 2020

What is a pandemic?
24 February 2010
A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.
WHO | What is a pandemic?

WHO has developed a system of identifying where the world stands with regard to pandemic flu. The system has six phases:
Phase 1 -- No new influenza virus has been found in people or animals.
Phase 2 -- New virus has appeared in animals, but no human cases.
Phase 3 -- A new strain of animal influenza virus infects humans, but there have not been human-to-human infections.
Phase 4 -- The new virus passes from person to person, but transmission is limited and confined to a certain location.
Phase 5 -- There is frequent transmission of the virus between people in a particular place, but it hasn't spread to the rest of the world.
Phase 6 -- Pandemic. The virus is widespread worldwide.
What Is a Pandemic?

CDC Confirms Person-to-Person Spread of New Coronavirus in the United States CDC Confirms Person-to-Person Spread of New Coronavirus in the United States | CDC Online Newsroom | CDC

Coronavirus map: The COVID-19 virus is spreading across the world. Here'''s where cases have been confirmed.
As of Feb. 23, COVID-19 cases were confirmed in China, Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, the United States, France, Australia, Malaysia, Nepal, Germany, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Finland, India, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Egypt, Iran, Israel and Lebanon.

Looks like Phase 6 to me.

California · Feb 24, 2020

5030 said:
Fine with me (gold). I have a few nice bars stashed away as in pounds. Price per troy ounce has been pretty stagnant. If it climbed appreciably, I'd sell some off.

From a post elsewhere - somebody suggested get a lot of $1, $5 bills because if things really go weird the lowest price for anything will simply be the smallest denomination bill you brought. Liquidating gold might be difficult. Not impossible, but inconvenient.

But all this is speculation. Nobody knows whether this will be minor, as severe as the flu of 1918, or worst-case, civilization-threatening. Anybody claiming to forecast accurately is just blowing smoke.

rekees4300 · Feb 24, 2020

goeduck said:
Story from Italy is they have no idea who person zero is and they have 132 cases. Anything is possible.

There are stories of outbreaks where none of the victims have had any contact with other victims nor have any of the victims traveled to China or any other hotspot ... go figure ... this is really scary. How to explain it?!?

California · Feb 24, 2020

rekees4300 said:
There are stories of outbreaks where none of the victims have had any contact with other victims nor have any of the victims traveled to China or any other hotspot ... go figure ... this is really scary. How to explain it?!?

Casual contact on the subway? In the grocery store? Pumping gas after someone else touched the pump? Too many unknowns, presently.

dragoneggs · Feb 24, 2020

For those of you that know the Shanghai-Pudong airport and how busy it is... here is a picture from yesterday from my buddy's son who is trying to escape.