Gregrey's Home Gregrey's Photos Gregrey's Writing About Gregrey

 

Virus Blog

 

5/07/20

 

Exercise. I read today that Peloton sales (home stationary bicycle networked with other riders) saw sales increase over 65%. I see more and more people exercise when I WALK the dog. Today is day 56 and day 57 without going to the gym. I have made some furtive attempts but I'm clearly not a jogger and my other efforts have failed. I'm still hitting my minimum step goal of 70,000 a week, largely by taking monster walks with the dog on the weekend. I'm paying close attention to my belt. The meals keep getting better. I'm told that shortages may remove meat from my diet in the weeks ahead. Oh well. The belt is snug but the notch is still the right notch. I need a plan of some sort. Eve has been clear that even if the gym does eventually open I will not be one of the first people to return. I need a plan. I don't want a plan. Half of exercise is having sufficient motivation. Exercising is all about living longer and that long-term benefit seems a little less valuable with the short-term pressures of surviving a pandemic. I'm going to have to kick myself in the butt. I'm going to have to tell my self to SUCK IT UP and get that heart rate beating. I'm going to have to stop being a baby about all of this and do what's right. But not today. And maybe not this weekend.

 

Death vs. Dollars. It's obvious that leaders are trying to balance the value of a life with the value of the economy. A strong economy is good (for those that live) but sub-optimal if you are one of the people that dies. My MBA mind feels the need to run numbers to answer the question, "what would I pay to save one more life"? My analysis assumes that New York is a worst case scenario with something like 1400 deaths per million while California is closer to a best case scenario which looks more like 150 deaths per million people. I'm assuming that if we open up society too early that it will look like New York across the country. Good assumption? Let's keep going. So the incremental death rate across all 328 million of us means an incremental 410,000 deaths as a result of favoring the economy over saving lives. Sure, that's more than anyone is predicting, but it's consistent with my original forecast (thinking that might add credibility). But we don't see masks everywhere. We don't see six feet distances. We don't see a lot of things that reduce the spread (and what other countries have done). Now the other side of the equation...the economy. Ours is worth $21 trillion a year. The GDP is the value of our economy and what do we think we can preserve by opening up the country right now? Well a month represents 8% of the year, I'm going to guess 5% which is consistent with the high end of the forecasts I've seen in the last few weeks. That works out to a trade off of $3,268 in economy for each incremental death. And since the average age of death is around 70 and the average life expectancy is 79. So let's just assume that we'll do 5% better for the next 9 years. That means each sacrifice is worth almost $28K to the GDP for each new death.

 

Let's bring that home. My town of San Carlos, CA has about 30,000 people. NY-level rates in San Carlos would mean that 42 people would die. That's a number of some substance,  but I wonder what the probability is that I know one of those 42, or am one of those 42. So what if we were just to pitch in $28K for each of the 42 and decide to save their life? If all of San Carlos pitched in that would be $39.08 from each of us to save 42 of our neighbors. What if my assumptions are wrong and instead of a 5% impact for 9 years it's 10x that? Would you pay $390 to save 42? This is the richest country in the world and we can buy our way out of the problem if we simply use our resources and value our neighbors' lives.

 

5/08/20

 

6 Cents. I spoke to a client in the health care supplies space yesterday who said that they started to have inventory issues in January long before any of us realized what was ahead. They quickly sold out of masks and other items. Yesterday we saw a story on the news where a hospital said that "single use medical masks" (not N95) cost just 6 cents each under normal circumstances. That pissed me off because I just spent $15 to buy 10 masks. And then the same story reported, "Today those same masks are selling for  $1.50 each. Good, it wasn't just me that was getting ripped off.

 

 

Quick Takes

 

Next Blog Entry

 

Virus Blog

 

© Greg Harris, 2020

All Rights Reserved