The Washington Post recently reported that Israel, Spain, and France crushed COVID-19 but now have higher infection rates than the US. (Read the article here.)

But the conclusion drawn from these facts is wrong. What you don’t want to do is a broad lockdown. You want to aggressively quarantine the vulnerable and allow the virus to spread as quickly as possible among those that have little to no chance of dying from it… basically, anyone under 45 that has no co-morbidities.

The reason this more-sensible and less-stringent policy wasn’t the one we followed – except in a few countries like Sweden – is because the WHO, the CDC, and the political leaders believed it wouldn’t work. The population couldn’t be trusted to follow guidelines. It was preferable to scare the hell out of everyone and then use that fear to shut down the country.

We know now that we can’t defeat the virus by shelter-in-place mandates. Putting people indoors only makes things worse. We also know, as I pointed out in March, that we can’t defeat the virus by social distancing and wearing masks. Those measures are designed to slow the speed at which the virus spreads. I predicted that the infection would continue to “return” until we had achieved herd immunity – either from a vaccine or naturally or both.

And that’s what’s happening now. Cities and countries that “escaped” the spike in March and April began experiencing high rates of infection in the summer, and we’re having a third wave now.

My bet is that the death rate will end up being about the same everywhere, regardless of lockdown measures. And that might be about 70 deaths per 100,000 – or 0.0007%.

Following up on my recent blog about how the lockdown will change our economy, I saw this from investment analyst Whitney Tilson…

“The Spring lockdown…  and a proliferation of affordable prepared food options have accelerated the long-term trend toward less daily cooking.

“The Shelby Report, a supermarket industry news site, recently noted in June the grocery industry saw what would have normally been eight years of growth compressed into one month.

“Kroger (KR) – the largest grocery chain in the US – reported… that sales were up 15%, compared to growth rates of minus zero to 2.5% in the past 4 years. Sales from Albertsons (ACI) were up even more, 26.5% during the same 16 weeks.

“Comparing Albertsons’ ID sales from spring and early summer to those at Kroger from late spring through the summer tells us that things slowed down at the supermarket when people started leaving home more, but that sales are still growing at an elevated pace versus before the pandemic struck.”

If you think now is a good time to buy steel stocks… 

Two studies from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the overall economic impact of Trump’s 2018 tariffs was a net negative for American consumers – both companies and individuals.

One example: the tariff protection enacted by Trump’s “pro-steel” policymakers. It has made it easier for US steel companies to compete against foreign steel companies, and has thus “saved”’ thousands of jobs for US steel company employees. As a result, however, the overall cost of steel-related products has increased sharply. Since steel‐​consuming individuals are a far larger share of the US economy and workforce than is the steel industry, the net effect on the vast majority of US citizens and the US GDP has been decisively negative.

Smart investors understand this. They understand that American steel consumers are paying much higher prices than their global competitors, and that, ultimately, it will end badly. That is why US steel‐​industry stocks are lagging far behind the S&P 500 and will continue to do so until the trade war ends.

Those Sunscreens Could Kill You 

About 10 years ago, I published a book about skin cancer.

Back then, all my smart friends knew that the sun caused skin cancer and that skin cancer can be fatal. So they were lathering themselves and their children with suntan lotion every time they stepped outside.

Like them, I’d read the scary reports. But the idea that the sun could be inherently bad for Homo sapiens made no sense to me. The sun, I knew, was the source of all life on earth. Plus, being outside in the sun felt so naturally good. Like drinking spring water or swimming in the ocean.

A colleague, Jon Herring, did the research and most of the writing for the book. His conclusion was that, yes, I was mostly right. Too much sun – i.e., getting a sunburn – can, if the exposure is repeated, result in the less-harmful forms of skin cancer: squamous and basal cell. But the sun in healthy doses is not only good for you, it is really good at producing Vitamin D. And Vitamin D is superbly good at protecting us from all sorts of cancers, including melanoma, which is the kind of skin cancer that kills.

If this is true, how did we come to believe that even a bit of sun would could kill us?

Jon also discovered that many of the studies that linked sun exposure to skin cancer were funded by… you guessed it! Coppertone!

And here’s another discovery that Jon made: Of the six most popular sunscreens on the market at the time, five had carcinogenic ingredients! And something like three of those ingredients were activated by the sun!

I was hoping that the book would go viral. It didn’t. And most of my smart friends are still coating themselves in sunblock when they go out.

I talk about it now and then. And I’ve given away many copies of the book. But it’s not much on my mind. So I was interested to see this in a recent blog post from my friend Dr. Al Sears:

A new study, commissioned by the FDA, who has told us for years that sunscreen is unsafe, looked at six common toxic sunscreen ingredients – and found that these chemicals don’t just affect your skin. They accumulate in your bloodstream at dangerously high concentrations – far higher than the FDA’s own safety threshold.

An editorial accompanying the FDA research in the Journal of the American Medical Association, admitted: “Sunscreens have not been subjected to standard drug safety testing.” Even The Wall Street Journal has started asking questions about why these toxins are still used in sunscreens.

The six chemicals – avobenzone, oxybenzone, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate, and octinoxate – have been linked to multiple short- and long-term health problems, including hormone disruption and, ironically, skin cancer. The FDA has also requested safety data from sunscreen manufacturers on further six ingredients known to have toxic effects.

These chemicals mimic estrogen, causing hormonal imbalances, allergic reactions, skin irritations, and reproductive harm. They also attack the cells in your body, causing premature aging. And studies show they can promote the onset of breast cancer.

In the interest of giving parents more control over their children’s education and addressing quality concerns, Sweden implemented a voucher system in 1992.

This meant that parents were able to choose any school for their children, regardless of where they lived and without worrying about tuition. And since then, more and more of them have been choosing to put their children in independent charter schools.

Before the voucher system was implemented, fewer than 1% of all students in Sweden attended these charter schools. That number jumped to 4% in 2003, 14% in 2012, and 18% in 2019. This suggests that charter schools were always more desirable than their attendance numbers indicated… but beyond the reach of many families because of the cost.

They are called friskola – “free school” – to distinguish them from private tuition-based schools. They have to be approved by the Swedish National Agency for Education, and they follow the same national curriculum as the municipal public schools.

They can be owned and operated by profit-oriented private companies as well as non-profit organizations. And as economist Milton Friedman has pointed out, this has introduced an element of competition into the entire Swedish school system that should improve the overall quality of education and drive down costs.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor… Misinformation

There’s a lot of chatter going on about a nefarious plot by the administration to undermine the upcoming election by crippling the USPS. So I figured it might be a good idea to clarify some things about the way the service works.

First off, while it’s true that the USPS is in financial trouble (it lost $8.8 billion in 2019, its 13th consecutive year operating at a loss), it’s not in any immediate danger of shutting down. The service has “sufficient liquidity,” according to its most recent quarterly report, “to continue operating through at least August 2021.”

Next, pictures have been going around showing mailboxes loaded onto trucks. This led to the idea that Trump was having mailboxes removed in order to make it more difficult for people to vote by mail. Fact is, the USPS often moves mailboxes around, on a case-by-case basis, as part of its regular routine. Due to this misconception, however, the service has opted to pause this activity.

Lastly, keep in mind that the USPS  has never been able to guarantee a delivery date for any mail, so there’s no guarantee that all mail-in ballots – especially those posted last-minute – can be delivered in time to be counted. No matter what you’re mailing, you have to take ordinary delivery delays into consideration.

Hopefully this eases some concerns you may have had about voting by mail. Even so, assuming you have the option, I’d still say that in-person voting is best. After all, if you had a winning lottery ticket, would you mail it in… or put on your running shoes?

Welcome Aboard, Warren 

“It doesn’t do anything but sit there and look at you.”

Until recently, Warren Buffett’s opinion on gold seemed pretty clear. That seems to have changed a bit, though.

Okay. So maybe he didn’t actually buy gold. But he bought shares in Canadian gold miner Barrick Gold through his investment company Berkshire Hathaway. 20.9 million shares, to be exact – all while selling his Goldman Sachs majority (84%) share.

While this doesn’t prove that he’s had a change of heart on gold ownership per se, it may suggest a change in his faith in the American dollar/economy. Or maybe he’s found a reason in something I’ve been saying for quite a while now: Gold is tangible, portable, and private. It is the ultimate insurance against the type of economic catastrophe we’ve been dreading.

While I wouldn’t call myself an elite numismatist, I have always been a supporter of precious metals (namely gold) ownership and have written about it a few times. In fact, I recently wrote a beginner’s guide for buying gold bullion coins that you might want to check out. Maybe it will inspire you to join the millions of us who are collectors.

Meanwhile, for whatever reason…

Welcome aboard, Warren.

Mega Mansions Are Selling Like Hotcakes! 

A five-bedroom house built in 1955 in East Hampton is up for sale. The price tag: $72 million.

Nirav Tolia, the co-founder Nextdoor, is selling his San Francisco home in the Pacific Heights for $25 million.

Entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg just sold his Beverly Hills home, privately, for $125 million.

And a mountain home in Vail was recently purchased by a biotech entrepreneur for $57 million, a record sales price for this ultra-affluent Colorado town.

These are just four of dozens of houses sold for mega-millions since March, when the Corona Crisis shutdown began. A glance at sales data from these super-exclusive real estate markets presents a clear conclusion: They have not suffered. Quite the contrary, demand and prices are at all-time highs.

In my June 29 blog, where I talked about the immediate economic consequences of the coronavirus crisis, I said that I would not want to be investing in multi-million-dollar houses right now.

So, what’s going on?

I did a bit of research. There’s not enough data to support any reasonable conclusions… but we can make some guesses.

Why the selling? 

The super-rich are generally better informed about economics and market trends than the average Joe. That means they are aware of and concerned about the runaway federal spending that has accelerated in the past several months. It’s possible that some of them have decided that inflation is inevitable in the long run and a market crash is possible in the short-term, and so they’ve decided that it’s a good time to transfer some of their stock market wealth into real estate, whose prices traditionally rise and fall in line with inflation. If you have half a billion in stocks right now, converting 10% of it to buy a $50 million mansion might be a smart, anti-inflationary move.

Why the buying? 

Many of these super-exclusive neighborhoods are protected enclaves – far from the city centers that are being burned and pillaged by BLM and Antifa revolutionaries and local, fun-loving looters. But some of them – like Beverly Hills in LA and Pacific Heights in San Francisco – are close enough to the action to be vulnerable to the sort of spread of chaos to suburbia that Donald Trump has been criticized for talking about. I have more than one friend in New York, LA, and other city centers that are considering moving away. If you had a mega mansion near one of the high-tax, high-unemployment, hyper-revolutionary hotspots and you could make a few million by relocating to a safter, quieter, tax-friendlier location, wouldn’t you be tempted to move?

That said… I’m still not buying.

The Fake Problem of Imposture Syndrome 

Here’s the thing about imposture syndrome. It’s not worth talking about.

I just watched a TED Talk in which Elizabeth Cox posits that the way to relieve imposture syndrome is to talk about it. Talk to your peers. Talk to your boss. Talk to anyone that will listen to your precious problem: “I’ve accomplished so much, but I feel like a fraud.”

Cox says that no amount of success will rid you of this sort of self-doubt. Maya Angelou had it. So did Albert Einstein. If they felt that they were faking it, there is no height you can climb to that will eliminate it.

I can’t argue with that. But it’s a bogus issue. A made-up malady to justify yet another idiotic social science program and millions of dollars in wasted studies.

I have two reasons for saying that.

First, you can easily overcome self-doubts by characterizing them honestly. Einstein felt that he didn’t deserve the accolades he received, that his accomplishments were based on the work of others that he pilfered. And Angelou felt that she might not be the greatest American poet of the century, which is what so many fawning critics called her.

Guess what? They were both right. Einstein was, indeed, a thief of good ideas. And there were (and are) dozens of American poets better than Angelou.

And second, the imposture syndrome is a silly exercise in narcissism – in the vain idea that one can be the best.

The way to get rid of it is to accept the fact that however good you are, there are always several that are equally good but not as lucky-to-be-in-the-limelight as you. And there is always at least one that is better.

The worst thing you can do when you have imposture syndrome is talk about it. You may fool yourself into thinking that your interlocutor will feel sympathy for you, but all he or she is doing is thinking, “What is this jackass humbly bragging about?”

According to CDC data, the current wave of coronavirus peaked on July 25 (5-day moving average) nationwide and between July 22 and August 1 in the states that have accounted for the most cases: California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, etc. Since then, cases have come down about 12% nationwide and as much as 30% in the affected states. (Again, 5-day moving average.) The death count, which should follow the case count by two to three weeks, hit 1000 deaths per day (again, on a 5-day moving average) on July 31 and has, as would be expected, stayed in that range since then, but should start coming down sometime this week or next. We’ll see.