The Cipher

I should probably delete this comment.

15 minutes ago, lkn said:

people will find out the hard way, when crypto experience their first major sell off

Did you sleep through all of 2018 and May of this year as well?

However it's true that the vast majority of voices in the crypto-sphere are shilling for their own advantage. There are some good crypto communities out there, but they seem to self regulate either intentionally or via the birds-of-a-feather effect, so doubt most posters on here will find them and doubt they'd stay if they did.

I keep writing that crypto is the wrong asset class for beginners to learn to trade in, but we keep getting threads like this one so knock yourselves out I guess.

8 hours ago, Autonuaq said:

by setting an higher standard the teachers will drop out and replace by better teachers.

 

in every country we have state education even in the west. 

But where are these teachers going to come from? Is the Ministry of Education prepared to pay way more than they currently do, and if not how do they intend to attract top talent?

This problem is not unique to Thailand and is well known in certain professional circles in the West also. Specifically, the majority of top talent entering the workforce out of college head to careers in finance and tech. Engineering, management consulting, administration, medicine, and law suck up most of the rest.

Teaching never even hits the radar, and there's no easy fix. I assume it's much the same in Thailand. Would welcome creative ideas for fixing the issue tho.

I submitted my application on Tuesday of this week and received my e-visa on Wednesday. I submitted to the consulate in Vancouver, Canada using this portal: https://www.thaievisa.go.th/

Was surprised at how fast the approval process was.

8 hours ago, blackprince said:

One of the challenges of managing data science techies, whether in the stock market or other application areas, is getting them to look at the bigger picture, something many of them are unable to do because (1) they are trained to dive into the detail and (2) they usually have a narrow psychological focus which attracted them to that kind of work in the first place. In layman's terms, they often can't see the wood for the trees. Fortunately I don't fit into the latter category either.

 

The bigger covid picture includes:

 

(1) long covid, estimated by the UK's NHS at c 50% of discharged patients and by other research at c 50% of cases (that surprised me too) - I linked to the research a few days ago. As I'm sure you know, long covid has many potential symptoms ranging from substantial damage to vital organs to debilitating brain fog. Long covid can affect people of any age, otherwise healthy or not.

 

(2) breakdown of national health services due to overloading of beds and ICU facilities. Such a national catastrophe would have unpredictable societal consequences, particularly in developed nations where citizens tend to expect a bit more from their governments.

 

(3) suppression of more aggressive mutant variants.

 

If covid was just about the mortality rate, my analysis would possibly not be too different from yours, for most demographic groups anyway; but covid isn't just about the mortality rate - far from it.

Shoot, I'm tempted to get drawn back into this topic. But my better judgment is telling me to pass.

8 hours ago, blackprince said:

look at the bigger picture

I'll just quickly confirm that my position on this topic hasn't changed, specifically due to big picture considerations in the macro. Ie, what is the best medium-long term move for our societies.

2 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

I’m 41 and it’s just dawned on me to get my butt into gear ! I only want to work another 10 years if it’s possible.

First thing you want to do - (a) figure out how much you think you'll want to spend in retirement per month/per year. Then (b) figure out the amount of your income that you can reasonably rely on in retirement - for most people this would be a pension. The difference between (b) and (a) is the amount you'd need to make up with your savings in some way.

Here's an example for easy math: Assume you want to spend $50k/yr. You have a pension that pays $25k per year, so you need to fund the remaining $25k with your savings. You wanna retire at 50 so you need savings that will last you another 50 years in this case (to be safe).

If you sell your house at retirement (I realize you don't want to do this, but just for the sake of the example), you could fund 40 years of annual $25k drawdowns without ever investing the cash. That would see you through to 90 years old. Realistically, if you invest that $1M, or if your home continues to appreciate in value, you could pretty reasonably see yourself through to 100.
---

2 hours ago, chrisandsu said:

What would you guys recommend to speed the process up ? 

Start soon. When invested, money compounds through time. So the more time you have, the more your invested cash will grow (assuming the investment goes up on average). So the sooner you start, the quicker you can benefit from the effects of compounding.

Generally, bonds are in a bad place right now. And bank interest is non-existent. So you'd probably have to move up the risk curve into stocks or real estate to try and generate a decent return.

---

But I'm not sure exactly what your situation is. If you feel comfortable providing details I'll help you think through the case. But if info is too personal, free to tell me to sod off also ????

5 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

I'm massively inconvenienced by these people.

Yeah, so am I. We need to decide on one way to end this pandemic and then mandate it. If that means forcible jabs, then let's nut up and do it. If that means living with the virus and some more deaths each year, then let's nut up and do it. I really dgaf at this point.

I work pretty hard so that I can live a lifestyle I enjoy, and Covid has forced me to put much of it on hold for almost two years now. I'm getting very tired of having to wait while others muck about.

All I want is for either the masses and/or our governments to have the courage to chart a course of action that will put this behind us. But as is usual today, polarization and broken structure of democracy are dragging this out for way longer than necessary.

4 minutes ago, jacko45k said:

Does the report also mention that China likely has the second highest number of poor and peasant people too? 

Not sure, but there are tons of poor people in China. Their government themselves have admitted that 40% of the pop of China earns less than $140/mth.

It's almost like you can't apply a one-size-fits-all lens to discussions on the country and its population. ????

7 hours ago, NanaSomchai said:

do you really think the Thais (stingy as they are)

The only way to survive in this Kingdom is to be as stingy as they can be.

Pays up to 400% markup for lux goods. Gets called "stingy."

4 hours ago, alyx said:

That is great but, if I were you, I would insist and ask them to be more flexible.

This being said, they would have to plan for the PCR and I am not sure what happens in the case of such late arrivals.

For my hotel at least, they said the tests for each day are submitted to the lab at 2am and they generally get results back by the next morning. That was their justification for why the cutoff time for check-in was 2am. I guess that makes sense to me(?)

11 hours ago, Salerno said:

That I'd be checking direct with the hotel; there was a post yesterday (I think it was) and a guy had been told 2 days by the hotel (Marriot from memory) quoting him their normal checkout and checkin times which IMO is ludicrous as these aren't "normal" circumstances.

 

The main issue being the CPR timing i.e. does the affiliate hospital have staff to do the tests at the hotel on call 24/7, if not can they arrange to have the swabs done at a testing centre/hospital on the way to the hotel or would you have to be taken to the hotel and then tested first thing in the morning. If having to do them first thing in the morning that could cause problems with a noon checkout.

Update on this for those who are curious.

I was able to find a hotel that would let me check out by 12pm as long as I arrived before 2am on the same day. Checking in after 2am would require an additional night. If arriving with more than one person, the Test & Go fee is applicable to each individual even if staying in the same room.

Normally I would have no fear of making it to the hotel before 2am with a midnight landing time, but I do wonder what the setup at the airport is like now. Hopefully it's faster than usual rather than slower.

20 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

I got a masters in corporate finance.  Which involves lots of mathematics.  I was in this field for years, and combined with my degrees in economics, accounting and data processing, I did lots of modeling. Forecasting.  Stats.  I'm far from a quant! LOL.  Many who do stats are not quants either.

So I'm a private equity investment analyst by trade. I work with some very talented data scientists and we discuss this topic with some regularity. In fact, in that instance I'm the one doing cheerleading for vaccines. And to be honest, the degree of vaccine hesitancy among numerics people surprises me. But I'm pretty confident that there isn't a problem with my math.

The broad mortality rate going forward is different than the broad mortality rate looking backwards. Why? Two main reasons. (1) As you've said, cases and deaths are undercounts. But cases are very likely to be more severely undercounted than deaths because it's a lot easier to notice deaths than asymptomatic cases; and (2) vaccine saturation at this point has pushed down severity and vaccines are readily enough available in many places that I don't see any case to protect skeptics that don't want that protection.

Besides that, arguing about mortality rate swings of tenths of a percent is irrelevant to my point that measures taken are disproportionate to risk. And at this point they're wildly so.

Anyway I'm not going to belabor this point more than I already have. I'm aware that many of you guys are older with backgrounds that make this discussion kinda fruitless for all involved, and it doesn't feel right to me to cause additional anxiety at this stage. 

32 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

I was a statistician for several years.  Many econometric modeling.  I know stats very, very, very well.

I mean this in the most polite way possible, but I don't believe this for a second.

Ever talk to a data scientist or quant? If you have, there are telltale signs you can't miss.

Moreover, while you're free to disagree with me, none of your rebuttals have come at me from the perspective that a data guys' would have.

32 minutes ago, Jeffr2 said:

But you are discussing this pandemic like you are a covid denier, especially that 1% fallacy.

I deny absolutely none of the facts about Covid. There's also no fallacy in my writing. I have consistently attempted to put the numbers bandied about on here into context and that's it.

My aim is, and always has been, to show that our policy reactions are disproportionate to the threat and to argue that all normalization should occur immediately and without further moving of goal posts.

I am aware of where how a person could properly dispute my position, but so far nobody on here has figured out how to actually do it, although I've given hints a few times.

Sometimes I wonder if there are people who are just physically incapable of understanding relative values. It's gotta be like, coded into DNA or something. The 'unable-to-understand-percentages' gene.

43 minutes ago, sirineou said:

it is reported over 5 million dead worldwide from the virus. Given that many countries under report , it is argued by many that the number can be three times as high. (15 millions) .

In comparison  the number of dead from World War 2 was about 75 million. 

 

It is safe to say that if the measures that were taken had not been. the deaths from covid 19 could had been close to, if not greater than World War 2, 

Have said this before. Will say it again. Please, let's get used to looking at large numbers in percentage and trend terms. Just spitting out raw figures is extremely unhelpful.

There were roughly 2.5B people at the onset of WW2. There are roughly 7.8B people on Earth now. A population increase of more than 200% from the time of the War. As a result the same number of casualties, which by the way we are nowhere near, would be significantly less severe a shock now than it was then. If we assume that Covid has broad mortality of 1%, which might even be a generous assumption in this case, the disease would need to infect approx 100% of humanity to match WW2's death toll. That 5 million deaths is less than one tenth of one percent of population.

The other thing I feel compelled to add relates to the death count. So many people seem to panic that the death count is rising, but of course it is. it is impossible for it to go down. Every year the total number of people lost to cancer, or car accidents, or <insert cause of death here> rises too. Why? Because time is passing. As a result we should be looking at changes in trends and rates over time.

Final point. Measures to fight the pandemic are not costless. The cost is time, money, and lost utility. What are we sacrificing to save each incremental life, and is it proportionate to the risk at hand? Perhaps that is a question we should start asking ourselves at some point.

1 hour ago, JCP108 said:

For what it's worth...

 

I am booked to land in BKK at 00:05 and have your same concerns. I contacted the hotel I plan to book (The Bazaar) and they explained that their process is to take the guest by the hospital between the airport pickup and first arrival at the hotel for the test. They said that they do testing even at the time. So, then I just have to wait at the hotel until the test result comes back.

Thanks! I'll add them to the list of hotels to investigate.

What date are you flying in? Maybe we're on the same flight ????

On 11/1/2021 at 6:37 PM, Salerno said:

but like to help out when I can in factual areas.

Sorry for the ping, but can I hit you with one more question?
 

My flight is scheduled to arrive at 12:05am. Do you think I can get away with booking just one night of ASQ (ie, land at 12:05am -> check in at 1:30am -> check out 12pm) or do I have to run it to two nights? Thanks!