“Davidson” submits:
Buy Equities!-The numbers do not support pandemic and fears of lack of treatment options. The headlines that “Life will Never be the Same” is repeated daily. Other statements are ubiquitous:
“Health systems will be overwhelmed!”
“300mil will be infected in US”
“2mil deaths in the US”
The problem with these predictions is that no country reported numbers that support these headlines and media assertions. Common sense-based hard counts have been ignored. First on the list is how many individuals test positive who feel ill enough to have testing? In So. Korea it is 4%-5% out of 300,000+ tests. In the US thus far the number is ~10%, but US culture being highly entrepreneurial tends to self-treat till illness forces one to seek medical attention. How many are ill with coronavirus and will never be counted? It is a number which will not be known till well after this illness has run its course. Nonetheless, the numbers who are ill and the actual death-count do not support a US 80% infection rate and 2mil predicted deaths.
This illness is still early days but already the US pharma arsenal has identified multiple effective treatments. The media and some politicians have focused on these as being untested and unapproved. Some in the media have called these treatments ‘dangerous’. These comments fall into the long running media approach of gaining viewers and advertising revenue found in the phrase “If it bleeds, it leads!” Fearful headlines always boosts advertising revenue. Some media outlets routinely falsify stories. It is how they stay in business. The fact is that world has on-the-shelf treatments for coronavirus which have known safety profiles. Pharmaceutical companies have already donated more than 150mil doses of an anti-malarial drug with decades of safe use. Some of this information is entering the media.
These Drugs Are Helping Our Coronavirus Patients
The evidence is preliminary on repurposing two treatments. But we don’t have the luxury of time. https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-drugs-are-helping-our-coronavirus-patients-11584899438?mod=opinion_lead_pos5
All the Drugs Proving Anecdotally Effective Against COVID-19, and the Companies That Make Them
These drugs could be key to staving off COVID-19 until a vaccine is developed. https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/03/21/all-the-drugs-proving-anecdotally-effective-agains.aspx
This drug, hydroxychloroquine phosphate, is used to prevent malaria and has shown anecdotally that it can prevent coronavirus. The fears that healthcare providers will become ill and the delivery of will healthcare collapse are being offset by giving prophylactic doses of this drug to prevent illness. Coronavirus has already been treated very successfully with 6days of dosing in a small study in France. In the US, the reports from major medical centers on both coasts are that US physicians are prescribing this treatment without ‘approval’. ‘Approval’ means that the FDA has reviewed a systematic double-blind trial of several thousand patients showing high rate of efficacy and specifically approved a treatment for a specific illness. Physicians routinely will prescribe drugs for ‘off-label’ non-approved use if the safety profile is high and medically the potential benefit is high.
Not only is the coronavirus illness not adding up to the fears and subsequent political response, there is a supply of known treatments which are effective and even preventative. Markets have declined on fear promoted in the media that ‘life will never be the same’. The data from multiple countries add up to fears being overdone. Treatments are being ramped up and once their effectiveness becomes known widely enough, markets will recover. Insider buying has always proven prescient longer term. Typically insider selling exceeds buying by a margin just over 2:1. When market panics occur, insider buying exceeds selling. During extreme panics as seen near significant market lows, the ratio of buyers to sellers produces an extreme reversal, more than 3+ buyers to each seller. Two charts describe the level of insider buying compared to the fear reflected in the VIX and SP500.
Buy Equities!-The numbers do not support pandemic and fears of lack of treatment options.
