Chris’ note: Yesterday, the Dow shot up 7%, as the coronavirus infection rate slowed in New York City. It was the sixth-best percentage gain for the Dow in the last 87 years.
I’ve been a broken record on why you should play defense in your portfolio with cash and gold. But you also want to play offense. And as our tech expert, Jeff Brown, reveals below, that’s because the virus is stabilizing. That means better days on the horizon… a path back to a more normal life… and a turnaround in the stock market.
Jeff is particularly excited right now about the opportunities in 5G. He’ll reveal all tomorrow at 8 p.m. ET during his “State of 5G” summit.
If you’re interested in learning more about a tech trend not even COVID-19 can stop, I encourage you to tune in to hear what Jeff has to say. You can get all the details right here.
And read on for insights from my Q&A with Jeff…
Chris Lowe: Thanks for taking the time to talk ahead of your “State of 5G” summit tomorrow. I know you travel all the time looking for new tech recommendations for your readers. How has the coronavirus impacted that?
Jeff Brown: I was home all last week. But that was the first week where I sat still… because there’s nothing to do. Everything’s shut down!
Prior to that, I hadn’t stopped traveling at all. I was in D.C. through the end of March doing some recording there for tomorrow’s 5G summit.
We shot some amazing footage. We have video of me testing 5G wireless networks at obscene speeds. The No. 1 was the speed I got in front of the White House – 1.7 gigabits per second.
That’s more than 100 times faster than the average 4G wireless speed. It was on a Samsung Galaxy S20+ phone right in front of Lafayette Square.
We also included a discussion around COVID-19… the lockdowns… and how they’re actually a catalyst for the 5G boom. So I’d encourage anyone who’s interested in that side of things to join me tomorrow.
Chris: You’re more optimistic than most about our path through the coronavirus panic. It’s resonating with Legacy folks. As you know, many of them are fed up with the hysteria on cable news and across social media. Why are the gloomier forecasts wrong?
Jeff: First off, I want to emphasize something important. This is not a hoax. This is a very real virus. But, believe it or not, it’s not very deadly at all on a percentage basis of those who have contracted it. And of course that’s what we need to better understand.
The mortality rate of any virus is the number of deaths per the number of people who have been infected.
We have a fairly good – although by no means perfect – handle on the number of deaths. What’s missing is an accurate picture of the number of people infected. The only number that we have to go by is the number of confirmed cases.
That’s a problem. Because it’s partly a function of the number of tests you do… and who you test. The number of confirmed cases includes only people who’ve taken tests that came back positive.
There’s only one country in the world that’s systematically tested a large chunk of its population. That’s Iceland. The authorities there were smart. They tested folks – whether they had symptoms or not.
Iceland tested 5% of its population this way. What the data revealed is telling. Half those confirmed to have COVID-19 were asymptomatic… They didn’t even know they had it. Another 49% had mild or moderate symptoms that didn’t result in them seeking medical care of any kind.
So just 1% of the population tested at random like this had conditions that were severe enough to seek medical help. And only a small percentage of those who needed help were hospitalized.
Chris: What about in the U.S., where you and most of our readers live?
Jeff: Unless you test universally, like they did in Iceland, you can’t get a clear picture of what’s going on. More than 99% of people they tested didn’t develop symptoms severe enough to seek medical help. That suggests most people don’t seek out tests.
I believe we’ll see something similar in the U.S. The reproductive rate of the virus – its “R naught” (R0) – is about 3. The number of people it infects triples each day.
The first confirmed case in the U.S. was on January 20. We let it spread for two months without widespread behavioral changes.
So hundreds of millions of Americans… and billions of people around the world… are likely already infected. They were either asymptomatic or had such mild or moderate symptoms they didn’t seek medical help.
Chris: If a lot more people are infected than we know about from the confirmed cases tally, are we going to reach “herd immunity” sooner than most folks expect? Will we have enough immune people walking around who’ve had the virus already… so it slows the spread?
Jeff: Yes, absolutely. That is precisely my point. We can’t say anything for sure. This is still detective work. But my research tells me we’ve reached a state where probably somewhere between 40% and 70% of the population has already developed the immunity against COVID-19.
This is consistent with research out of the University of Oxford in Britain. It shows that between 36% and 68% of the British population has already contracted COVID-19. It’s just that most of them don’t know it. There were either no symptoms… or the symptoms were too mild to really worry about.
Those numbers were the most logical, rational estimates I’ve seen. They take into account the R0. And they paint a realistic scenario of a country on its way to herd immunity.
Chris: Based on your research, what’s next?
Jeff: From the data that I’m reviewing, over the next several days, we will have seen the peak of COVID-19.
This is extremely encouraging. It means we’re coming out of the back end of all the press-induced fear and panic. And we’re returning to some new form of normalcy.
Once we get a handle on the full data set of who’s infected, we can see a path toward getting kids back to school. And we can see a path toward healthy, productive adults getting back to work.
It’s not going to happen all at once. But this will slowly return the economy to normal. This will obviously cause a big shift in sentiment on the stock market.
You wouldn’t know it by turning on cable news. But there’s a lot to be excited about in 2020 coming off the depressed valuations we’re seeing right now.
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
April 7, 2020
Dublin, Ireland
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