Enrique and I debate America's response to the pandemic; Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology; Excerpt from my book on the importance of reducing distractions; Funny meme

1) I continue to believe that we've botched our response to the pandemic, but it's important to recognize that there's another side of the story – even within my own firm!

Below is an e-mail exchange I had with my colleague at Empire Financial Research, Enrique Abeyta, who is knocking the cover off the ball with Empire Elite Trader and Empire Elite Growth. (I sent this correspondence to my coronavirus e-mail list – to join it, simply send a blank e-mail to: cv-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com – but I also wanted to share it here.)

It started when I sent Enrique this article in the New York Times about Belgium, When COVID-19 Hit, Many Elderly Were Left to Die, about which I commented:

I've finally found a country that botched the response to the virus worse than we did...

Enrique replied:

I don't think "botched the response" is at all fair or accurate... "Lost the media war" would be more accurate.

If you take the tri-state area out, the U.S. ranks 16th in mortality per million – better than all the major countries of Europe except Germany, better than the major countries of LatAm (Mexico and Brazil), and better than Russia.

Asia is an anomaly (perhaps because of T-cells) but taking out New York, the U.S. lines up very well.

I replied (in black) with Enrique's responses (in green):

1) I'm sure if you removed the hardest hit area from every other country, we'd be back to our sucky position relative to them.

Well our non-hardest-hit area is 85% of our population... I don't think that could be said for any of the other countries that I referenced. At worst, it's a push... but suspect it's far better.

2) With 162,000 deaths, an economic meltdown (which would have been far worse if we weren't so rich that we could afford to throw trillions of dollars at it), and a second wave/continuation of the first wave that pretty much no other country has experienced (notwithstanding the tiny flare-ups in Asia and Europe), I think it's hard to argue that our outcomes are anything but a total calamity – on both an absolute or relative basis.

No other country has experienced a second wave/continuation of first wave because no other country had a large area affected and then successfully shut down 85% of the country – like we did. They all got hit at once. Actually, I think our outcome is actually pretty good on both an absolute and relative basis – at least if we focus on the numbers and not the media.

3) Ironically, if your theory is correct – we should have adopted Sweden's approach – to the extent that we've done so (as you argue below), it's been by accident, due to our total incompetence. For the latest evidence of this, see this Washington Post article: The lost days of summer: How Trump fell short in containing the virus.

Basically, we did take Sweden's approach for the vast majority of the country and are seeing slightly better results. The one thing I do agree on here is that it was not an overt decision per se, but I don't honestly think there's much that could have been done better... regardless of who was in the White House. One of the things that troubles me the most is the hubris to think that politics or governments really have all that much influence on this phenomena which is an incredibly complex natural ecosystem... When looking at all of non-Asia and non-island or tiny countries, everyone's results are kind of turning out the same. The only difference is if you had high population density and got hit early.

4) Serious question: I cannot think of a single thing we've done as a country in response to this pandemic that I view as better than the average country: taking the threat seriously early on... protecting the elderly and vulnerable... social distancing... closing borders... developing a strategy... communicating it clearly... ramping up testing, PPE, ventilators, contact tracing... etc., etc., etc.

Conversely I can think of few things that we have done worse than the average country:

• Taking the threat seriously early on. On March 17, we closed 85% of the country for two months and learned very quickly from the mistakes (which weren't necessarily their fault, it just happened so quick) of the tri-state region and densely populated Europe. March 17 is pretty early.
• Protecting the elderly and vulnerable. Everywhere but New York protected the elderly and vulnerable.
• Social distancing. Mobility data demonstrate social distancing.
• Closing borders. We closed our borders.
• Ramping up testing. We have done more tests than every other country on a per capita basis by 50%.
• PPE, ventilators. We have excess ventilators.

Only two of your statements really stand up in my view:

• Developing a strategy, communicating it clearly. It's true that there wasn't a clearly articulated strategy being driven by a central party but that's not our system, is it? Europe as a whole didn't have a single strategy and neither did we. Each state took on a strategy that was based on some common ideas sort of like individual European countries.
• Contact tracing. Our contract tracing is also non-existent, but I think it's pointless anyway.

Net-net, I don't really know how you can argue with our mortality per capita. The numbers are clearly above average.

Last thing I will say is that if we had a different administration, I think we would have exactly the same results. If it was all politics, why do by far the worst results exist in the bluest states in the country – New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

This has been – and continues to be – much bigger than politics. Again, it's hubris to think humanity can have more than a little influence on such a complex natural interaction...

I honestly don't give a damn about politics in any of this. The only political aspect of this is that both sides have been focusing on politics and posturing versus each other versus the actual data, and that's resulting in unfortunate policy distortions and actions that we will regret later. Both sides are equally guilty of this...

Thank you for the enlightening debate, Enrique!

2) I just finished listening to this book and found it enjoyable – and frightening: Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. Here's a summary:

Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction – an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones. Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone, and Millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle to interact with real, live humans.

In this revolutionary book, Adam Alter, a professor of psychology and marketing at NYU, tracks the rise of behavioral addiction, and explains why so many of today's products are irresistible. Though these miraculous products melt the miles that separate people across the globe, their extraordinary and sometimes damaging magnetism is no accident. The companies that design these products tweak them over time until they become almost impossible to resist.

By reverse engineering behavioral addiction, Alter explains how we can harness addictive products for the good – to improve how we communicate with each other, spend and save our money, and set boundaries between work and play – and how we can mitigate their most damaging effects on our well-being, and the health and happiness of our children.

3) The book reminded me of something I wrote about in my forthcoming book, The Art of Playing Defense:

I'll admit to being very prone to distractions. As a kid, I loved video games – even the primitive ones of those early days like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Defender, and Donkey Kong. I remember one year in high school when I memorized the patterns for every level of Pac-Man so I could play for hours for only a quarter – I shudder to think of how much time I wasted, sitting there alone like a zombie. After college, I binge-played Risk on the computers at Boston Consulting Group, when I should have been doing work.

It's a constant struggle for me to rein in these distractions – and it's getting exponentially harder. Staying on track and focused is a bigger challenge today than at any time in history thanks to these three notorious time-killers:

Smartphones and Social Media

Our smartphones are the single-most pernicious distraction in society today. They beep and buzz constantly with updates, text messages, and e-mails, making it a real challenge to get any work done. It even cost one woman her job.

A business-owner friend of mine employs two dozen people to package and ship products from his warehouse in Dallas. One of these workers, a young woman in her 20s, was constantly checking her phone. Exasperated, my friend approached her and asked her to put it away.

"There's work to do," he said.

"Well," she replied, clearly annoyed, "I do have a personal life."

"Not on my clock, you don't," he said.

Ten minutes later, she pulled it out again.

My friend just pointed to the nearest exit and said, "There's the door. Get out. You're fired."

Smartphones are highly addictive, and I suspect this young woman is symbolic of a wider problem. Our brains have become used to the constant stimuli our smartphones bring us, and we're now like rats in a science experiment, mindlessly checking our phones over and over throughout the day and getting little hits of dopamine every time to satisfy our craving.

Binge-Watching

It wasn't very long ago when there were only a dozen channels on TV, and you had to watch a show when it aired or miss it forever. But today, streaming video services like Netflix (NFLX) and YouTube have not only killed rental chains like Blockbuster and impacted traditional television, but also ushered in an era where an unlimited amount of the world's video entertainment is now only a few swipes or clicks away. And it's not all schlock. In many ways, we're in a golden era for television, with thousands of hours of tremendously compelling content like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Friday Night Lights, and Game of Thrones available at low cost.

It's so easy to get hooked on one or more of these shows (I speak from personal experience) and waste ungodly amounts of precious time!

Video Games

Modern video games like Fortnite, Minecraft, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and Call of Duty are wildly addictive – with their immersive plots, amazing graphics, and the ability to play with friends (or strangers) all over the world. According to the Entertainment Software Association, more than 150 million Americans play video games (more than half of our adult population), wasting an average of six hours per week. Sixty percent of Americans play video games daily.

I'm not one of them: ever since I broke my addiction to Risk at age 24, I've deliberately never played them because I know how addicted I became to the primitive games of my youth... so I can't imagine what would happen if I started playing these vastly superior games!

If you want to be successful in life, you need to make a conscious effort to reduce the distractions in your life.

4) This meme cracked me up:

Best regards,

Whitney