Whitney Tilson
Fri, Apr 22, 2022|Whitney Tilson

New Empire Junior Partnership; Flying without a mask; Dems being dumb; What endemic means; If you are a dumba**...; Dashboard; We've reached herd immunity; Africa; Articles

1) I'm delighted to tell you that I was able to get my team to approve what I think is the best deal we've ever offered...

The Empire Junior Partnership.

I had to twist some arms to get this approved...

But the one caveat my team insisted on was that we couldn't offer this to everyone – only the first 1,000 people who sign up... and then the price goes up forever.

To learn more about this and sign up, simply click here.

I hope you'll act quickly enough to take advantage of this incredible offer!

2) I continue to follow the pandemic, but not as closely anymore, in part because I've been really busy with other things, but mostly because, as I've been writing since as far back as December 14, COVID-19 has become endemic.

Below is what I sent to my coronavirus e-mail list yesterday afternoon (to sign up for it, simply send a blank e-mail to: cv-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com).

1) I'm on a flight to Minneapolis now where I'll meet up with my wife, who's flying from New York City (I was in Miami to speak at a conference this morning, pitching pot stocks of all things – for details, click here).

We're on the Parents Council at Carleton College, which is fun and interesting – but mainly an excuse to visit our youngest daughter twice a year. She's a freshman there and loving it (as did our oldest daughter, who graduated four years ago)!

I'm delighted to finally be flying without a mask right now!

For more on air travel without masks, here's Dr. Leana Wen in the Washington Post answering readers' questions: How to stay safe during air travel. And here's Dr. Katelyn Jetelina: SARS-CoV-2 transmission on planes. Excerpt:

Planes have great filtration/ventilation systems and vaccines are highly effective, but no mitigation measure is perfect. Wear your mask while traveling, especially with increasing case trends. The layered approach will help reduce your individual-level risk, but perhaps more importantly will help travelers who are high risk and the greater community. To me, wearing a mask is just not that big of an inconvenience for good health.

I don't disagree with her general recommendation that most people should keep wearing masks on planes, but I think the community risk is low enough that it should no longer be mandated.

2) Lot of folks (mostly Democrats) are decrying the judge's ruling that lifted the airplane mask mandate, but I think they're being medically and politically dumb.

While Democrats in general are wising up on this issue, they're still perceived as the "let's keep pretending that the pandemic hasn't become endemic" party, which is going to cost them dearly at the polls in November.

Americans are done with COVID – and rightly so. As I've been saying for months, it's now a bad flu season and we need to treat it as such.

5) To be clear, COVID becoming endemic doesn't mean it's gone away or that there aren't still ongoing deaths (though thankfully we're down to only around 400 per day). It just means it's morphed into yet another strain of seasonal flu, albeit a severe one, but this is mitigated by the universal availability of highly safe and effective vaccines.

In contrast, the flu vaccines, while equally safe, aren't nearly as effective, ranging from 10% to 60% each year, with an average of 40% (source). That's why I call the COVID vaccines "miraculous." They were not only developed in record time, for which I've always given the Trump administration a good deal of credit, but they're incredibly effective. I shudder to think of what would have happened, how many more deaths there would have been, and how much worse off we'd be today if the COVID vaccines were only 40% effective...

As for those who've chosen zero percent effectiveness (i.e., refusing to get vaccinated), I've given up worrying about them. If they get sick, go to the hospital, or even die, I will feel badly for them – but my sorrow will be tempered in the same way I feel about smokers who get lung cancer. Stated bluntly, "I feel badly for you and sincerely hope you recover quickly, but you were a frickin' idiot, so don't come crying to me for sympathy."

Forgive me if that sounds cold hearted, but I genuinely believe in what I regularly preach to my daughters, what I call my No. 1 Immutable Law of the Universe: If you are a dumba**, there WILL be consequences! (This was the theme of my commencement address to the 8th graders at my alma mater, Eaglebrook, in 2016. You can watch the video of it here, or read the transcript here.)

6) Here's a quick overview of the U.S. right now (source):

(For a more in-depth analysis of the current state of affairs in the U.S., see these posts by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina: State of Affairs: April 19 and Can we trust case numbers?)

There's been an uptick in cases (which is surely far greater than what's shown here because most people who have COVID don't get tested and, even if they do, it's a home antigen test that never gets reported).

But, importantly, there has been no increase in hospitalizations in recent weeks and deaths are still declining. This is partly because of the lag effect – it takes weeks for cases to become hospitalizations and then deaths – so I expect these two metrics to rise, but only slightly.

Surveys show that roughly half of Americans have had COVID, which provides excellent immunity (though, as with the vaccines, it's unclear how long it lasts – and, of course, you can't get a booster, other than getting it again... my sister, who lives in Kenya, has gotten it THREE TIMES!).

Plus 82% of Americans age 5 and up have had at least one shot and 70% have had two (for those 65 and up, it's 95% and 90%), so that's a large amount of immunity as well. (Disappointingly, only 31% of those 18 to 64 and 61% of those 65-plus have gotten a booster, so if you're not boosted, do so!)

If you assume, as I do, that the unvaccinated are disproportionately represented among the half of Americans who've had COVID, and then you add the vaccinated and those who've had both (like me and two of my three daughters, my parents, my sister, and her son... we're all triple vaxxed and had COVID), I think we're close enough to herd immunity to treat this like the flu.

7) Wow, it seems like Africa has had 100 times more COVID cases than has been reported: 800 Million Africans Have Had COVID, WHO Says.

Thank goodness the population skews so young, which is the main reason the excess deaths aren't massively higher.

The question is: it seems like most of Africa has likely reached herd immunity via infection, so can we focus on vaccinating the elderly (especially those who haven't had COVID) and otherwise pretty much ignore it?

8) Various articles and videos I don't have time to comment on:

Best regards,

Whitney

P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.

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