Why not utter the D-word (death) when reporting on the virus?

https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/08/03/world/europe/03reuters-health-coronavirus-fallout.html COVID-19 Long-Term Toll Signals Billions in Healthcare Costs Ahead

Theraputics is likely to be a significant contributor to the overall solution spectrum. Mesoblast is nearing the end of its FDA approved and NIH sponsored CVODI19 Phase2/3 trials, with an inital data call out early Sept. It is potentially the ultimate backstop as it targets the sickiest ventilated patients. It targets Cytokine Storms which is a cause of death in COVID19 patients, by modulating their immune systems. Because inflammation is one of the significant underlying risks with these patients, it also has the potential to minimise the secondary issues to other organs, which research has started to confirm is a major problem in a large percentage of the COVID19 population, ie. vesicular blood clots in the heart, brain, etc. Its lead product (which is the same as above but for GVHD in children, the mother of all inflammation) is due for FDA fast track review 13th Aug (initial recommendation or not) before being sent to the FDA for final approval. Many years of phase 1,2,3 data on safety and efficacy sitting behind the granting of a FDA fast track review of their biologic license application.

Good luck with that vaccine thing. Also good luck with that 9 month time frame. I have a friend who got it, recovered, got it again and continues sick. This is an example of full strength live vaccination which failed to provide any immunity. Also 78% of asymptomatics to mildly symptomatics when their hearts were tested showed cardiac inflammation post infection. If the mortality doesn't get you the morbidity will. Happy days are not here again.

I'm drunk already. Credit goes to creditwritedowns.com

We have not been able to come up with a vaccine for 30 years so coming up with one that actually works in the next couple of years is pretty low.

People in the USA spend more on Food than the Mortgage...No wonder they are all so overweight

Thanks Ed and Ash, for this DB, please Ed check the data on Cozumel and Los Cabos, the two are examples of how they have dealt with the CV, of course there is the travel issue, but will you be safe enough traveling to other spots?

Really good. Thanks.

It would be nice if RV could dig more in to some systemic (market structure) risks that are again boiling down the surface. Michael Green talks about a reduction in flows an the weakness this creates. At the same time, we start to see the risky short gamma trades again, in particular in tech (e.g. QQQ) that could trigger a major volatility burst if broken. I really would like to know if second liquidity event is probable or not and how it could play out. I know it may need an exogenous chock and not just a worsening of the economy (or sectors of it) but I think there are plenty of them on the horizon: issues with the stimulus plans, vaccine issues, China issues, election issues and, in particular, second wave dynamics that are not well understood by the market. The northern hemisphere has currently the best conditions to battle COVID (mostly outdoor activities & high temperatures which both reduce R0) but that will change in Sept-Oct. The impact of the R0 jumping "only" by 0.5 could have a dramatic impact, especially in those regions that did not contain COVID well during the summer and as such face potential hotbeds in many cities.

I am a fan of the daily briefing and I think I listened to most if not all of them but I have to ask to dail down the medical talk and increase the financial content. You guys are not doctors :-) and though I understand the linkage it is far more interesting to dive into the economic effects of the medical stats in Germany for example, than the discussion about these stats. Same with vaccine talk. You can summarize that in one or two sentences and move on. For the rest - excellent work, much appreciated. It has become my daily ritual,

I'm getting more than a little tired of COVID discussions . . .

I noticed a trend in the use of the B word and had a look at usage of "bifurcation", "division" and "split" since why use four syllables when one will do. From Wikipedia, "a bifurcation occurs when a small smooth change made to the parameter values (the bifurcation parameters) of a system causes a sudden 'qualitative' or topological change in its behavior" and ""bifurcation" was first introduced by Henri Poincaré in 1885"" . WikiDiff adds some colour: https://wikidiff.com/split/bifurcate. Various sources indicate "branched" or "divided" as near synonyms for "bifurcated". Investopedia indicates a particular usage in corporate finance https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bifurcation.asp. Further refinements are given as: Saddle-node (fold) bifurcation Transcritical bifurcation Pitchfork bifurcation Period-doubling (flip) bifurcation Hopf bifurcation Neimark–Sacker (secondary Hopf) bifurcation Homoclinic bifurcation Heteroclinic bifurcation Infinite-period bifurcation Blue sky catastrophe in which a limit cycle collides with a nonhyperbolic cycle. Is all this talk of "bifurcation" on Realvision just conditioning us for the path to "blue sky catastrophe?

Shoutout from Melbourne, Australia :(:(

You really need to get Noble prize winning scientist Michael Levitt on here for an interview on covid-19

You really need to get Noble prize winning scientist Michael Levitt on here for an interview on covid-19

Thing you guys are potentially not considering...how many people will actually take the vaccine? Personally I believe a large majority will decline to take it.

About Sweden's methodology, I just want to add that cultural behavior needs to be taken into consideration if you want to extrapolate and apply it to other countries. The Nordic way of expression has already a social distancing factor. Just like most Asian cultures. And Germany too. That's one of the reasons they are better off. If you go to the other side of the coin and apply it to Italy "hug and kiss festival" way, Spain "welcoming with gusto" way, as of matter of fact, most Latin based cultures, it would be a MESS. The U.S. is a middle road, but would not be a pretty picture too.

It was interesting to hear Nordics getting on the radar. As a norwegian, the Nordics (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland) all have different strategies, albeit Sweden the most "extreme" (and now probably the most successful, according to Bloomberg). Norway got into shutdown middle March. Newspapers had "wartime" headlines (red, big letters, crisis etc), but there are almost no mentions of COVID-19 in mass-media these days. Nowadays, mass-media worldwide is into wartime headlines...

Vaccines will not save us for the new normal. Listen to Dr. Michael Osterholm at CIDRAP. There is a drug about to finish up its placebo controlled FDA trials. One of the most knowledgeable virologist/immunologist with respect to Covid 19, Dr. Bruce Patterson (formerly with Stanford), and this drug thinks it could end the need to social distance. Treatment is one shot a week for two weeks. Here is an interview with Dr. Patterson about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=n9spx-4opMI

Very much enjoyed the discussion today, particularly Ed's metaphor of vaccine as a bailout meme in most people's minds. Would like to suggest that along with Ash's comment on better treatment modalities...we should keep in mind the long term costs around 'recovered' Covid-19 patients. Many of those who are discharged from hospitals are not necessarily free of physical complications. A certain percent return to hospital with strokes and heart attacks, another group we are finding are afflicted with vascular inflammation, diminished mentation, fatigue. It is one nasty bug and we still have a long way to go in our overall understanding of Covid-19 and its aftereffects. Totally agree with Ed's estimate of possibly two years to reach a "new normal" and, I believe, it is a time frame one should plan on.

I don't think the 'new normal' will prove sustainable in the absence of a vaccine. Western Societies are getting close to what must be some kind of breaking point. I already know of a friend of a work colleague's wife, who has committed suicide due to the situation in Melbourne. Can't believe that authoritarian clown, Daniel Andrews, has imposed a curfew (8pm - 5pm). Australia is a liberal democracy in name only now.

These Daily Briefings are excellent.