We read a lot in the news about the new Wuhan coronavirus and the illness it causes (COVID-19), but some important points often get left out.
[1] COVID-19 is incredibly contagious.
COVID-19 transmits extremely easily from person to person. Interpersonal contact doesn’t need to be very long; a taxi driver can get the virus from a passenger, for example. The virus may be transmissible even before an infected person develops symptoms. It may also be transmissible for a few days after a person seems to be over the virus; it is possible to get positive virus tests, even after symptoms disappear. Some people may have the disease, but never show symptoms.
[2] The virus likely remains active on inanimate surfaces such as paper, plastic, or metal for many days.
There haven’t been tests on the COVID-19 virus per se, but studies on similar viruses suggest that human pathogens may remain infectious for up to eight days. Some viruses that only infect animals can survive for more than 28 days. China is reported to be destroying paper currency from the hardest hit area, because people do not want to accept money which may have viruses on it. Clearly, surfaces in airplanes, trains and buses may also harbor viruses, long after a passenger with the virus has left, unless they have been thoroughly wiped down with disinfectant.
[3] Given Issues [1] and [2], about the only way to avoid spreading COVID-19 seems to be geographic isolation.
With all of today’s travel, geographic isolation doesn’t work very well in practice. People need food and medical supplies. They need to keep basic services such as electricity and garbage collection operating. Suppliers of food and other services need to come and leave the area and that tends to spread COVID-19. Also, the longer a geographic area is isolated, the larger the percentage of the people within the area that is likely to get COVID-19. The problem is that the people need to have contact with others in the area for purposes such as buying food, and that tends to spread the disease.
[4] The real story regarding the number of deaths and illnesses seems to be far worse than the story China is telling its own people and the world.
The real story seems to be that the number of deaths is far greater than the number reported–perhaps 10 times as high as being reported. The number of illnesses is also much higher. At one point, facilities doing cremations in the Wuhan area were reported to be doing four to five times the normal number of cremations. Some of the bodies in the Wuhan area now need to be sent to other areas of China because there is not enough local cremation capacity.
China doesn’t dare tell its people how bad the situation really is, for fear of panic. They want to tell a story of being in control and handling the situation well. The news media in the West repeat the stories that the government-controlled publications of China provide, even though they seem to present a much more favorable situation than really seems to be the case.
[5] Our ability to identify who has the new coronavirus is poor.
While there is a test for the coronavirus, it costs hundreds of dollars to administer. Even with this high cost, the results of the tests aren’t very reliable. The test tends to produce many false negatives. The virus may be present somewhere inside the person being tested, but not in the areas touched by swabs of the throat and nose.
[6] Some people get much more severe symptoms from COVID-19 than others.
Most people, perhaps 80% of people, seem to get a fairly light form of the COVID-19 illness. Groups that seem particularly prone to adverse outcomes include the elderly, smokers, those who are obese, and those with high blood pressure, diabetes, or poor immune systems. Males seem to have worse outcomes than females.
Strangely enough, there is speculation that people with East Asian ancestry (Chinese, Japanese, or Vietnamese) may have a higher risk of adverse outcomes than those of European or African ancestry. One of the things that is targeted by the disease is the ACE2 receptor. The 1000 Genome Project studied expected differences in ACE2 receptors among various groups. Based on this analysis, some researchers (in non-peer-reviewed studies, here and here) predict that those of European or African ancestry will tend to get lighter forms of the disease. These findings are contested in another, non-peer-reviewed study.
Figure 1. Chart from Coronavirus risk for Asians, Africans, Caucasians revealed.
Bolstering the view that East Asians are more susceptible to viruses that target the ACE2 receptor is the fact that SARS, which also tends to target the ACE2 receptor, tended to stay primarily in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. While there were cases elsewhere, they tended to have few deaths.
Observational data with respect to COVID-19 is needed to determine whether there truly is a difference in the severity of the illness among different populations.
[7] China has been using geographical quarantine to try to hold down the number of COVID-19 cases. The danger with such a quarantine is that once the economy is down, it is very difficult to come back to the pre-quarantine state.
Data shows that China’s economy is not reopening quickly after the extended New Year holiday finished.
Figure 2. China daily passenger flows, relative to Chinese New Year. Amounts are now down more than 80% and have not increased, even as some businesses are theoretically reopening. Chart by ANZ, copied by WSJ Daily Shot Feb. 17, 2020.
Figure 3. China property transactions, before and after Chinese New Year. Chart by Goldman Sachs. Reprinted by WSJ Daily Shot, Feb. 17, 2020.
All businesses will be adversely affected by a lack of sales if they need to continue to pay overhead expenses. Small and medium-sized businesses will be especially adversely affected. Bloomberg reports that if a shutdown lasts for three months, there is a substantial chance that these businesses will run through their savings and fail. Thus, these businesses may be permanently lost if the economy is down for several months.
Also, restarting after a shut-down is more difficult than it might appear. Take, for example, a mother who wants to go back to work. She will likely need:
- Public transportation to be operating, so she has a way to get to work;
- School to be open, so she doesn’t need to worry about her child while she is at work;
- Masks to be available, so that she and her child can comply with requirements to wear them;
- Stores providing necessities such as food to be open, or she may be too hungry to work
If anything is missing, the mother is likely not to go back to work. Required masks seem to be a problem right now, but other pieces could be missing as well.
Businesses, too, need a full range of workers to restart their operations. If the inspector doing the final inspection is not available, the business may not really be able to ship finished products, even if most of the workers are back.
[8] A shutdown of as little as three months is likely to be damaging to the world economy.
Multiple things are likely to go wrong:
(a) Commodity prices are likely to fall steeply, because of low demand from China. Oil prices, in particular, are likely to fall steeply, perhaps to $30 to $35 per barrel. Besides cutbacks in oil demand from China, there is the issue of a general reduction in long distance travel, because of fear of traveling with other passengers with COVID-19.
(b) US businesses, such as Apple, will find their supply chains broken. They won’t know when, and if, they can ship products.
(c) Debt defaults are likely to become more common, especially in China. The longer the slowdown/shutdown lasts, the greater the extent to which debt defaults are likely to spread around the world.
(d) The world economy is likely to be pushed into recession, without an easy way to get out again.
[9] The longer the shutdown lasts, the more likely there is to be a major collapse of the Chinese economy.
In the event of a long-term shutdown, it would seem likely that, at a minimum, a new leader would take over. In fact, there would seem to be a significant chance of major changes within the economy. For example, the provinces of China that are able to restart might attempt to restart, leaving the more damaged areas behind. In such a case, instead of having a single Chinese government to deal with, there might be multiple governmental units to deal with.
Each governmental unit might consist of a few provinces trying to provide services such as they are able, without the benefit of the parts of the economy that are still shut down. Each governmental unit might have its own currency. If this should happen, China will be able to provide far fewer goods and services than it has in the recent past.
[10] Planners everywhere have been guilty of “putting too many eggs in one basket.”
Planners today look for efficiency. For example, placing a large share of the world’s industry in China looks like it is an efficient approach. Unfortunately, we are asking for trouble if the Chinese economy hits a bump in the road. Using just-in-time supply lines looks like a good idea as well, but if a major supplier cannot provide parts for a while, then having inventory on hand would have been a better approach.
If we want systems to be sustainable, they really need a lot of redundancy. Redundant systems are not as efficient, but they are much more likely to be sustainable through difficult times. There is a recent article in Nature that talks about this issue. One of the things it says is,
A system with a single cycle is the most unstable because the deletion of any cycle-node or link breaks the sustaining feedback mechanism.
“A system with a single cycle” is basically similar to “putting all of our eggs in one basket.” “Deletion of any cycle-node or link” is something like China running into coronavirus problems. We probably need a world economy that consists of many nearly separate local economies to be certain of long-term world economy stability. Alternatively, we need a great deal of redundancy built into our systems. For example, we need large inventories to work around the possibility of missing contributions from one country, in the case of a problem such as a major epidemic.
Conclusion
The world economy may become very different, simply because of COVID-19. The new virus doesn’t even need to directly affect the rest of the world very much to create a problem. The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world are very much dependent on the continued operation of China. The world economy has effectively put way too many eggs in one basket, and this basket is now not functioning as expected.
If China is barely producing anything for world markets, the rest of the world will suddenly discover that long supply chains weren’t such a good idea. There will be a big scramble to try to fill in the missing pieces of supply chains, but many goods are likely to be less available. We may discover quickly how much we depend upon China for everything from shoes to automobiles to furniture to electronics. World carbon dioxide emissions are likely to fall dramatically because of China’s problems, but will the accompanying issues be ones that the world economy can tolerate?
The thing that is ironic is that it is possible that the West’s fear of the new coronavirus may be overblown–we really won’t know what the impact will be with respect to people of European or of African descent until we have had a better chance to examine how the virus affects different populations. The next few weeks and months are likely to be quite instructive. For example, how will the Americans and Australians who caught COVID-19 on the cruise ships fare? What will the health outcomes be of non-Asians being brought back from Wuhan to their native countries on special planes?
“Italy’s economy, which was already contracting at the end of last year, looks sure to be thrown into yet another recession by a sudden outbreak of coronavirus that has rocked the country…
“Lombardy, around the financial capital Milan, and Veneto account for around a third of Italian GDP and half its exports.”
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-china-health-italy-economy/coronavirus-set-to-deal-heavy-blow-to-italys-ailing-economy-idUKKCN20I1TC
Furthermore, Italy is high on the list of countries with banks with problems already.
When my wife and I travelled to Italy in 2015, we met with an italian man we’d done business with and he was talking about the economic difficulties Italy was having. That Germany had taken a lot of the manuf. from them. His brother had at that time already moved to Austria to avoid the worst of it. How they have hung on until now is a miracle, but with Corona the miracle appears to be dwindling as its likely tourism will decrease.
Steve Bannon – ‘This Virus is Out of Control in China’
https://youtu.be/QlF0LcQO9Tg
Once you finish that presentation, repent and ask Me to deliver you from evil.
I watched the first little bit of this. Steve Bannon is advocating sending a lot of health care providers from around the world to China.
I think that this would be counterproductive. There is no good way of protecting these people from getting the illness. They are likely to get sick and need care themselves, while still in China. Or they will need to be flown home, in planes full of other people. Also, they will soon be needed at home. Presumably, the 80% of Chinese health care workers who had the disease lightly will soon be over it will be back to work soon. China needs to go with what they have.
The one benefit of sending health care workers to China is that they would soon be over it. Hopefully, they would have enough immunity to keep from getting it again, when they return to their home communities. This would allow them to work more effectively than if they were all down sick at the same time.
Just a note on “enough immunity.” It doesn’t work that way. The human specific immune system very effectively produces antigens that allows recognition of COVID-19 and in most cases destroys it. The fact that re-infection occurs at any significant level – isn’t a failure of the immune system – it’s a change (mutation) in COVID-19 that defeats the immune systems recognition of the COVID-19. It also means there are several mutated strains (subtly but effectively different) of COVID-19 by now being circulated internationally.
We won’t know until it becomes obvious – whether those new strains are more or less virulent than the original one that swept thru Wuhan. The only good news is that from the virus stand point – they tend to evolve into less virulent strains – because immobilizing and or killing the host, limits the virus replication and distribution. Consequently, the most successful mutations produce minimal symptoms allowing for high levels of distribution – like the Rhino virus that causes the common cold.
There are exceptions to that rule evolving to lower virulence of course. Rabies is the only virus that produces 100% mortality without vaccination. Marberg virus follows with up to 90% mortality (again evidence of multiple strains with more or less virulence and some as low as 20%) followed by the related Ebola virus – and on down the line of virulent virus with influenza comparatively much lower.
Fortunately, COVID-19 is not in a high mortality class of virus (like Marberg or Ebola hemorrhagic fever virus), but still many multiples more deadly than the seasonal flu. That said, the world of virus plays a constant game of “Russian Roulette” by almost continuous mutation and regarding their respective mortality potential as they seek a “sweet spot” to exist in and where further mutations generally don’t produce advantages – though they still continue. Of course, all of the aforementioned natural viral virulence evolution processes – assumes that no human geneticist is trying to create and select viral mutations for the benefit of any human agenda.
The cocky face of an imbecile in love with his own notoriety: Steve Bannon.
“The world woke up Monday to the reality that the coronavirus epidemic is going to have a much bigger impact on the global economy than investors and policy makers had assumed. Just how big, no one really knows…
“The potential for disaster is sobering. The economies of the world are extraordinarily resilient, yet extraordinarily dependent upon each other in a crisis. Sadly, the things we need most to get us through this — wise leadership, global cooperation and clear thinking — are harder to find than a surgical mask.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/if-the-coronavirus-isnt-contained-a-severe-global-recession-is-almost-certain-2020-02-24
“…[the global economy had no margin] for an accident at the beginning of this year. Yet there has been a big accident: China’s COVID-19 shock.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-the-global-economy-is-much-more-vulnerable-now-than-during-the-sars-epidemic-2020-02-24
“For some years now, many analysts have believed that the next major global crisis would start in China, because it was suspected to be hugely overleveraged; equally, if not more important, nobody knew what was really going on. However, with central banks keeping the money feed so easy, markets all over the world kept rising.
“Judging from the way equity markets are behaving today, could that time have come?”
https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/2008-once-more-the-world-may-be-headed-for-another-global-economic-crisis/1877962/
When the economy is already at the edge (over leveraged, businesses can’t make an adequate profit on investment, share prices unreasonably high relative to earnings, young people can’t afford new homes), it doesn’t have the ability to fight off any sort of natural disaster.
We usually think of natural disasters as fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, lack of rain for a long period. But epidemics have historically been a common type of natural disaster. We have just lost sight of this issue. If we had paid attention to all of the recent animal virus problems (loss of pigs in China, for example), we would have realized that this could be a problem for humans as well.
According to SG 66% of China’s factories are now in operation. Production is about 50% of normal level of production.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ERkK2ASXsAgcMSW?format=png&name=small
“Chinese small- and medium-sized companies have resumed only 30% of production capacity, said an official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.”
It is hard to see how China properly re-starts its economy without transmission of the virus accelerating all over again.
They may resume, but in a couple of months their major external markets will be at the height of the contagion (May-August? ) if containment doesn’t work – and frankly I don’t see that it can, but would be delighted to be surprised to the contrary.
And so the question is – can the central banks somehow paper over the financial fall-out from supply chain disruptions and defaults until the pandemic has run its course?
Even if these factories are in operation, I would expect that most of them would be operating at far below capacity. They can only use the staff that is really available and the raw materials that are available. If any part is not available, they operate at below capacity. Factories often have several different lines operating simultaneously. Only the ones for which staff, raw materials, and orders for finished products are available will be operated.
A complex economy has much more difficult time adapting to the outages caused by a virus than one in which all jobs are close to interchangeable, and all resources are local. If a person’s normal work is temporarily unavailable, he can do some other work for a time, for example.
Gail,
During WWII we bombed the heck out of Germany, at the end of the war they were producing more fighter planes than ever before – this is from memory. There are more intellectuals today than ever before, yes a great many useless degrees, but more people know calculus than at any time in history(that is a guess), software giants hire people able to do the hard sciences as they can learn coding, their learning skills transfer quickly. Housing is built better, not worse, cars are more than twice as good, we don’t need as many people to do brake jobs as both real and metaphorical brakes last longer.
Ours is a complex economy, but set up a Cisco router of today and it is orders of magnitude easier than one from Novell in the 80’s. The knowledge is embedded, in sand no less, tough stuff. Large solid state factories are almost completely automated, they are probably cleaner than any surgical suite, managing bacteria/viruses is trivial. One only has to thoroughly screen a small cohort of employees, isolate them for four weeks prior to entering the plant, provide them with ping pong, etc., call it a campus and it is done.
From an adaptive perspective, a loss of antibiotics would be a terrible personal loss to many, but it would be worse for the bacteria when they find that the meals left shrug them off, life adapts. We lament the lack of new antibiotics, we are self organizing, those who survive don’t need them, it is a feature of biology and this wonderful earth of ours.
It is going to be fine, you worry greatly about the banks and associated system. All the stuff is still there, turn off the switch, turn it back on and voila, everything is fine! We most likely have far more banking than anyone needs. Bernie may have a point, send all the bankers home, they screwed up housing twice, once with the S&L crisis, once in 2008. We don’t need a loan officer, we need a program to assesses credit worthiness and a CC backed by a UBI, it can all be done with a much lower carbon footprint. Maybe this is the Green New Deal in Action.
Possible conclusion: There is much activity that really isn’t necessary, Robert made an observation that a loss of 30% of the managerial workforce sometimes makes things better, and it is carbon neutral! Send them home, give them a UBI, and they will screw things up less and the overall cost could be less. Maybe much of what we do creates far more waste than anything useful, perhaps better to pay not to have it done. If we must suffer, look for the opportunities, the system is going to change, time to adapt, it is sort of life.
Dennis L.
“The economies of the world are extraordinarily resilient, yet extraordinarily dependent upon each other in a crisis.”
Am I alone in believing the second half of this sentence directly contradicts the first? Are Leonardo sticks “extraordinarily resilient” when three or four of them are pulled out?
Depends on the nodes, where they are. We are dependent on each other in crisis and in times normal, in times of crisis we quickly learn which nodes are necessary and which are not. One has to wonder if in the US much of the political hysteria by a certain group of elites is a dawning realization they are not one of the necessary nodes. The system adapts, far from being fragile, it is very resilient.
As for Leonardo sticks, when no one is watching, a bit of crazy glue, then change games.
Dennis L.
Dennis, that is a most astute comment. Yes, the “nodes” that seem to exert authority and plan all our futures are probably the very ones that will not be missed. The same for all the middle micromanagers who are expert at running formerly efficient organisations into the ground.
Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes viros. Seneca, of course, he of the famous “cliff”.
“The world woke up Monday to the reality that the coronavirus epidemic is going to have a much bigger impact on the global economy than investors and policy makers had assumed. Just how big, no one really knows…
I do think it was this past weekend when YouTube videos circulated showing numerous countries having Corona virus problems and wearing masks, from a wedding in the Philippines and Iran to a closed town in Italy, the realization hit most people that this was developing into a pandemic or at least a potential pandemic, then it hit the stock market.
There’s always that point in which the majority of people acknowledge something and that’s when it seems to have reached a threshold, and Monday, yesterday, it was evident.
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https://futurism.com/neoscope/two-thirds-coronavirus-infections-undetected
“A new report by researchers at Imperial College London suggests that nearly two-thirds of new COVID-19 cases have gone undetected.”
“The spread outside of China has the scientists worried. “We are starting to see more cases reported from countries and regions outside mainland China with no known travel history or link to Wuhan City,” noted co-author Natsuko Imai in the statement. Hence why their report “demonstrates the importance of surveillance and case detection if countries are to successfully contain the epidemic.”
If we do the math on these numbers, it does not paint a pretty picture. Assume that 2/3ds of all cases are undetected, so in China there have been 80k X 3 = 240k total.
That means that a total of less than 2% of the population of Wuhan have contracted the disease, yet the hospitals are hopelessly inadequate.
If just 2% of the population had the flu at any one time, there would be no big deal, yet less than 2% (more likely around 1%) of the Wuhan population infected has led to draconian actions, untreated people and deaths among doctors and other medical staff.
That 2% infection has taken over 2 months and left the city paralysed. So what will it be like with 5% or 10% or 50% infected?? Over what time period 6 months?? 12?? 18??, perhaps never ending with mutations over a decade or more??
Those that think this is no worse than the flu don’t seem to have a clue about what is happening.
“If we do the math on these numbers, it does not paint a pretty picture. Assume that 2/3ds of all cases are undetected, so in China there have been 80k X 3 = 240k total.”
If they’re right, that’s what it means alright, which is a massive number considering each one is capable of transmitting it to multiple new cases.
Here’s another set of stats to try and approximate the number of cases in Iran using South Korea’s numbers, which have 977 cases with 10 deaths. So that works out to 97.7 cases for every death. Thus Iran’s 15 deaths = 1465.5 round off to ~1465 cases rather than the 61 they are reporting. That’s a huge difference since 61 is only 4.2% of that estimated total.
And here’s an interesting question; The lab techs that tweaked a bat virus to concoct the Corona Virus, did they bio-engineer some segment of it to have superior mutation capability? It just doesn’t seem like they would engineer it any other way. Maybe it’s even got a timer on it, so after a few months it automatically mutates into a stronger form based on the weaknesses it has encountered or advantages discovered.
But here’s another question along those lines: Has it already begun to tweak itself to transmit even faster, as seen just recently in Italy, SK & Iran? And if it is mutating, how good is a vaccine going to be in 4 months?
Mutation: however fast you run, somehow the Old Man with a Scythe can go faster…..
Still, we should bear in mind that it may actually become less aggressive as time passes: mutation can. it seems, branch either way.
The Iranian situation may be shocking their medics because the Chinese under-reported the mortality rate and fast decline of sufferers for political and economic reasons – it may therefore always have been this dangerous.
“Still, we should bear in mind that it may actually become less aggressive as time passes: mutation can. it seems, branch either way.”
That’s true. I was thinking in terms of what lab techs may have done to bio-engineer it to mutate into something stronger, but who knows about that. But yes, viruses can mutate into something less virulent.
Again, the “space weather” solar min could play a role here, their neighbor Iraq enjoyed very unusual snow fall just few weeks ago, Iran might be affected by colder climate as well.. or at least was at the time of hatching the super spreaders recently..
Xabier, he does not need to run. He need only keep his Appointment in Samarra.
That is the damage which has been done by the ‘The flu is far worse’ meme., comparing present mortality figures and ignoring the % of very serious cases which each generates.
Unintelligent and misleading. Apples and oranges. But I fear only a collision with reality will kill the meme
Relatively few of the dead people (we hope) will be of working age, so their impact on the economy will be relatively less.
If people are out for an average of two weeks from work (including some that don’t get sick, or get sick very lightly), then there were be lost wages/productivity equal to about 4% of economic activity for the year. If businesses require a precise mix of workers and of raw materials of different kinds, the lost wages could be higher than this, because of a Liebig’s Law of the Minimum problem. These are some of the issues David Korowicz writes about.
All of the activity in the health care sector is, in some sense, like a temporary growth industry. There will be temporary growth in masks and in training for low-level health workers. Growth in the health care industry could help offset falling output elsewhere, in some sense. One issue is the fact that this segment will quickly collapse, once the virus is over. Another issue is the fact that Health Care is not substitutable for basic needs, such as food, fresh water, and heat for homes.
The coronavirus scare may actually result in less deaths overall than if it had never happened. think about that one for a moment.
Every year around the world, especially in winter, there are millions of cases of colds and flu that develop into pneumonia…:
We estimated an average of 389 000 (uncertainty range 294 000-518 000) respiratory deaths were associated with influenza globally each year during the study period, corresponding to ~ 2% of all annual respiratory deaths. Of these, 67% were among people 65 years and older.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/
If those figures are ballpark accurate and the coronavirus scare is prompting people and nations to take the issue of contagion more seriously, then there may be a lot less people catching and dying from influenza as a result.
Feb 25, 2020.
An Email from a China Trader we deal with:
Our plastics factory in Dongguan is at 25% and may start to ramp up mid March. Even so, we won’t be at full capacity for some time. I mean to levels high enough to stand behind customer delivery commitments. This is our plastics injection factory and sell our houseware products in North America.
On the silicone factory, the situation is much more dire. I just placed an order for 50K pcs and they will not be delivering until early April. Under normal operations, lead times would be 3 weeks. Yet, we’re still in Feb for crying out loud and the lead time is 6+ weeks at best. They really have labour issues.
Up north in Putian near Fuzhou (footwear manufacturer), they started operations yesterday but they, like other factories across China, are not at full capacity and won’t be for some time. The only labour pool they can draw from is from the province itself. All those from the northern provinces are still not in the migration mode.
So I don’t see them shipping product till end of March. And they themselves don’t have a really good idea when they will return to normal operators (full capacity) until the CCP overcomes the Covid issues for good!
And when you add the issues South Korea, Japan, Italy and Iran are having…my goodness, this enigma is far from over. Pandemic? Not yet but it can happen in the coming month or two.
But my concern which many are not talking about is the supply chain issues and logistic challenges when product starts to head to ports, will the capacity be there for worldwide deliveries?
Who knows?
Digesting this, and best case scenario is stuff comes out the factory door in April. Assuming the shipping logistics are also functioning by that time, it takes a ship up to a month to make the journey from China to America.
We are looking at around 2 months before stuff gets to America. That is a BEST CASE scenario.
From this email, best case is likely wishful thinking because workers will NOT return to the factories until the virus is dead and gone. They will NOT return because the CCP says it’s gone.
Does anyone think the virus will be done by next week? How about the week after? Hands up if you think the end of March.
SARS took 6 months to disappear.
A person might think that factories in the North would be relatively unaffected, because they are a long way from Wuhan. You say,
A person would think that if anyone were in migration mode, the people from North China would be. Perhaps there are a lot more cases up north than what we are being told about? Or there are more shutdowns up in North China? This is the old industrial area, from what I know of it. Like Detroit, Indianapolis, Cleveland.
“Migration Mode” = Chinese New Year or Spring Festival – which can last a month somewhere between Jan and February – dates change each year. By tradition for the past 4,000 years – Chinese (both from China and other countries) migrate back to their place birth or family origin in China. During this one – in Jan. it was estimated that there were “3 billion people on the move in China during the Spring Festival – which included both Chinese citizen commuters and returning ethnic Chinese from all over the world. If you were planning it – perfect timing for a viral outbreak and maximum effective distribution.
How does the economy in China (and for that matter everywhere else in time) restart??
The number of cases in China are going down (if believed), until they get everyone back to work. It is not possible to get only ‘some’ industries working because of our modern complexity. Everything relies upon everything else, so it’s all or nothing.
Everything restarts, wait a bout 4-6 weeks and hospitals get clogged with patients again. What happens now?? Does the govt re-implement a total lockdown, or ignore it and keep going?
Both scenarios lead to disaster.
Open for 6 weeks then closed for another 6-10 weeks while the ‘numbers’ subside could become a recurring disaster, basically taking steps down complexity each time.
The alternative of keep going will not work either, as industry after industry, factory after factory will be struck down with too many sick, dead or just plain ‘no shows’ to operate with any effectiveness. This is especially so with the JIT world and many parts, from different factories needed for all types of ‘widgets’.
This is a fine mess we have gotten into this time OlIie!
Is this the first step down the Seneca cliff?? Hard to think of it otherwise.
Honorary medal awarded for the thoughts on sequencing.
No medal, please, but here are my thoughts:
1. Food
2. Transport of food to the people or relocalisation of the people to the food
3. Delivery of fuel and spare parts to the food growers and transporters
4. Alternatives for machines that break down and cannot be repaired,
including horses, donkeys, strong people, … and the tools they need
5. Everything else.
Yes, folks, it’s back to an agrarian society.
I respectfully disagree; it will rise again, it is self organizing and Gail has firmly convinced me of that, this is a speed bump. There is no point in making a bet it will fail, what joy or purpose in collecting the bet; better a bet with a 1% chance of winning than a bet with a 100% chance of losing. It appears more a problem of cash flow, all the magical incantations of the bankers are so much noise, new technology is passing them by, it has been that way for some time. Microsoft did not need money from a stock listing, Google may have finally used Wall Street for their IPO, but they started initially to bypass them and probably never had need for money.
This could very well shake out all the deadwood. Government workers for example, social workers whose main goal is probably collecting a defined benefit pension; if any of the political comments are to be believed, some cranky old New Yorker with a bad tan seems to have done more for the underserved and all the servers combined. What will the servers do? In my day when it snowed in Madison, men, and it was mostly men who had few means of support were given grain shovels and put to work moving snow off the sidewalk. It is the Green New Deal in action, for real, a guaranteed minimum income as long as you show up for your low tech, low carbon foot print shovel. That does not require much of a supply line and there is something soothing to she sound of a shovel moving snow from concrete as compared to a diesel powered plow, etc. Ad astra per aspera
Dennis L.
Yes, re-start is pretty much nonsense, as if there were a button to press. Nor will people be in a mood to consume as before, and maybe too poor to do so.
And all the time a steady attrition of exhausted and over-worked medical staff, leading to less and less capacity to deal with patients, testing, etc.
This is why Dr Campbell argues for attempts to slow the spread,rather than allowing it to build to a rapid and intense peak, because he can see how quickly hospitals will be completely over-whelmed.
Logically, it will probably be necessary to refuse treatment to anyone over 70, then 60, leaving them to recover or die at home, in order to make the task manageable.
I am afraid you are right. It is the complexity of our situation that leads to multiple no-win choices.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Singapore up from 89 to 90… of course that’s only one, but what if that one person was spreading the virus for 2 or 3 weeks?
India still at 3 cases… almost too hard to believe… all 3 cases are defined as “recovered” but did these 3 really not infect anyone else?
Iran 61 cases and 12 deaths, so the cases must be much higher…
Italy 78 to 157 to 231 in two days… there are now 3 cases reported in central Italy, so the virus may have been unleashed from the north to the rest of the country…
Japan “quietly” up to 159…
South Korea will pass 1,000 any day now…
and yes the USA up to 53 cases… it’s unleashed, and only a matter of time before it’s an epidemic here… this will be quite interesting to see the reaction of Americans… grocery stores may begin to look like some of the worst Black Friday mob scenes…
I assume our government will provide accurate stats, so that will be interesting as well, to see the percentages across the country… perhaps many unaffected small towns, but probably big bursts of cases in and near the big cities, but very randomly, I would guess…
or maybe it will be very sunny weather into the spring and summer and the spread will diminish…
time for a fine dark chocolate bar and BAU tonight, baby!
In terms of weather if you look at sat images of (N) Italy, they are still in ~winter mode as there are several hours per day of low clouds/haze formation, which is favorable condition preserving the viruses. And as we are likely into new solar minimum period, the seasons will be shorter anyway (from both ends), should the virus be mutating over the span of several years this “space weather” condition will to some extent help the spreading..
We hope.
Over the past month, stock prices of a small pharmaceutical company named Inovio more than doubled. In mid-January, it reportedly discovered a vaccine for the new coronavirus. This claim has been repeated in many news reports, even though it is technically inaccurate. Like other drugs, vaccines require a long testing process to see if they indeed protect people from disease, and do so safely. What this company—and others—has done is copy a bit of the virus’s RNA that one day could prove to work as a vaccine. It’s a promising first step, but to call it a discovery is like announcing a new surgery after sharpening a scalpel.
Though genetic sequencing is now extremely fast, making vaccines is as much art as science. It involves finding a viral sequence that will reliably cause a protective immune-system memory but not trigger an acute inflammatory response that would itself cause symptoms. (While the influenza vaccine cannot cause the flu, CDC warns that it can cause “flu-like symptoms.”) Hitting this sweet spot requires testing, first in lab models and animals, and eventually in people. One does not simply ship a billion viral gene fragments around the world to be injected into everyone at the moment of discovery.
Inovio is far from the only small biotech company venturing to create a sequence that strikes that balance. Others include Moderna, CureVac, and Novavax. Academic researchers are also on the case, at Imperial College London and other universities, as are federal scientists in several countries, including at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Anthony Fauci, head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, wrote in JAMA in January that the agency was working at historic speed to find a vaccine. During the SARS outbreak in 2003, researchers moved from obtaining the genomic sequence of the virus and into a phase 1 clinical trial of a vaccine in 20 months. Fauci wrote that his team has since compressed that timeline to just over three months for other viruses, and for the new coronavirus, “they hope to move even faster
……Overall, if all pieces fell into place, Hatchett guesses it would be 12 to 18 months before an initial product could be deemed safe and effective. That timeline represents “a vast acceleration compared with the history of vaccine development,” he told me. But it’s also unprecedentedly ambitious. “Even to propose such a timeline at this point must be regarded as hugely aspirational,” he added
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/?utm_medium=offsite&utm_source=yahoo&utm_campaign=yahoo-non-hosted&yptr=yahoo
The plot thickens….who will cash in from this crisis?
Or will a vaccine only make the illness worse?
Gail, I find your lack of faith disturbing!
“I am currently developing a vaccine for the virus. Unfortunately, progress is slow, because it is created by bats and I have only five of them. Please fund me so that I can progress faster. And remember, those who contribute first will be the first to receive the vaccine. All major credit cards accepted.”
WSJ: Drugmaker Moderna Delivers First Experimental Coronavirus Vaccine for Human Testing
Clinical trial is expected to start in April, as epidemic originating in China spurs quick response
So we are perhaps saved, if the immune response doesn’t work like the one for Dengue Fever.
Now the stock market can go back up 1000 points.
Now, from the group of you all, what we need is 25 healthy volunteers (over 70) to step up, have the injection, then be exposed to coronavirus…….
Where did everyone go??
If you look at this from the standpoint of a Drugmaker, coming up with any kind of potential vaccine early on for this virus is a WIN. It doesn’t even matter if it falls flat later, because being the first one or one of the first drugmakers to supposedly have a vaccine in the works for trials later, is like claiming in the future to have a net energy fusion reactor just as oil supplies dwindle. In other words they are ‘Johnny on the spot’.
I just toss that out there because it would be easy to think they have a valid vaccine that only needs quick drug trials, but it’s likely just an early shot in the dark. Later they will claim they were close, but didn’t account for what one segment of the virus could do, and people will think; “Oh, they were so close – well good for them and I’m sure they learned a lot that will help in developing the right vaccine, even if it’s a different drugmaker. Meanwhile Moderna stock will have doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc.
Yahoo FinanceFebruary 24, 2020, 5:41 PM EST
Oil prices (CL=F) tumbled nearly 4% on Monday as investors worried over the impact of the coronavirus spreading outside of China. One oil expert believes that oil is already approaching the “area of the worst-case scenario.”
“We’re looking at a worst case scenario of a $41 a barrel on the downside,” said Stephen Schork, founder of The Schork Report, on The Ticker. “Crude oil prices right now are in the low $50s — we’re looking at a potential $10 decline … by the first half of the year”
Schork explained a pullback is typically part of the “normal demand decay” that happens in February each year, but given that China is the second-largest economy in the world, the significant pullback ahead of upcoming holiday travel season is not a good sign.
“We’re going to our worst-case scenario right now that in this quarter, we’ll expect to see close to a 20% pullback in demand for jet fuel,” said Schork.
“Relative to what we saw back in 2003 with SARS, we’re looking at a potential high of 31% decline in demand,” he explained.
“Keep in mind that commodity prices do not drive economic growth; economic growth drives commodity prices,” said Schork.
“[The] United States is producing crude oil like a banshee” during a time when there is a significant pullback in demand, he said, while there’s also significant pullback in economic activity.
“I tell you, we don’t want to be paying cheaper gasoline prices, because that is just a nasty telltale of how bad it could potentially be,” Schork added
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/oil-oilprices-coronavirus-gas-travel-stephenschork-224148175.html
How low can we go….????
It’s over….
This looks like the end of China’s central role in global supply chains. A microbe in China—and the response of a totalitarian government—is killing it.
Americans are angry. “I was on the phone with leaders from several hospitals in New York, and they told me that they had contracts with Chinese companies where they were waiting on things like plastic gloves, masks, all of this stuff where they were on the ships on their way to the U.S., and the Chinese government said ‘no, no, no, no, turn around, we need this stuff,’ ” said Maria Bartiromo on her Fox Business Network show “Mornings with Maria,” on the 19th of this month. “How is anybody going to trust China in terms of keeping up their end of the bargain again in business?”
The influential television anchor is voicing a concern heard throughout America these days. Peter Navarro, who appeared on her Fox News Channel show on the 23rd, provided more reasons for cutting links with Chinese suppliers. “China put export restrictions on those masks and then nationalized an American factory that produces them there,” said President Donald Trump’s director of trade and manufacturing policy, referring to N95 masks, used for protection against the COVID-19 coronavirus.
https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-killing-china-factories-creating-122600230.html
This brings tears to my BAU eyes….Roy Robison…if this performance doesn’t bring tears nothing will….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h9JArvEJ64M
My, my, we are on a ride😭😭
To the unknown
How dare they not provide goods for our printed $ I dont care if they are dropping on the street. Staying in their homes not going back to near certain infection in a crowded unpleasant unsafe (b4 virus) work environment how dare they. Dont they know its better to cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle? Whats wrong with these people?
So the lab did create a corona virus pathogen but thats not the one that leaked. Didnt make any more. Swear on my pet pangolan. Published it in a paper. Oh and had the sequencing for cv19 oh so quick. Coincidentally Chinas president calls for a review of lab security. Ya think?
Lots of stories on investment sites on “no panic keep your money in the market”….etc… they must be sensing something and are worried about a run….it is never one quick run for the exit it is always a few and then some more and then panic….I think we are a ways from a full market panic…but I don’t know..
gold keeps goin up
A note on governance :
We have people decommissioning and physically destroying coal and nuclear plants before their expected life is over, we have people gleefully destroying dams which provide power so a fish can swim upstream and hikers can enjoy the scenery, and we have acres of farm land being “paved” over with solar and probably more acreage than one wants to consider for windpower. Short of a large truck load of explosives, there is no way the foundation of a windturbine is coming out of the ground let alone a whole “farm” of them.
We seem to be painting ourselves into a corner with wishful, emotionally positive thinking. Non linear systems are fascinating, but when they sustain our lives, a bit of care and humility goes a long way.
Dennis L.
The problem is people thinking that they are doing good deeds, when in a broader sense they are not. Or at a minimum, there are multiple views of what is a good deed.
Agreed to a major extent. All these “solutions” are incredibly wrong headed. This is an excerpt of what I posted to a local Facebook group, in order to protest a particular development that would, de facto, extend the village boundaries and promote sprawl. People who constantly recommend the solutions you post were nowhere to support my lone voice:
“Getting rid of regional grassland–to facilitate development in our case– is said to release as much carbon into the atmosphere as clearing an equal amount of forest. None of our human caused global warming was independent of buildings on the land, even if they merely generated chainsaws or bulldozers to cut down forests and dig up grassland. But building goes on as though it could have no possible adverse consequences.
“Land development is the main driver for our economic system. Economic growth depends on land development. Economic growth must continue forever (to avoid collapse), so land development must continue forever. But infinite land development on a finite planet is impossible. It seems reasonable to conclude that land development is the fundamental force driving climate change, and that blaming the latter exclusively on fossil fuels abuse is blaming only a symptom of basically flawed ideas of civilization and the planning supporting it.”
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
The US added 18 more cases today for a total of 53. Iran shows 18 more cases for 61 total, with 12 deaths vs. US with none. No wonder people are questioning Iran’s total number of cases. I saw a video yesterday and they asked some guy on the street in Iran about that and he said the (Iranian) government is always lying.
It’s a common Iranian saying: ‘Iranians are liars’. I’ve hear it many times from Iranians.
Really it expresses several hundred years of deep corruption and instability, despotic, lawless governments, and now the mullahs and their fake piety and murder.
Harrowing times for them now.
“Harrowing times for them now.”
For sure.
Here’s an interesting one that helped the virus continue to spread – namely the flight of US passengers from the cruise ship in Japan, in which 14 were infected. At 5:13 of the linked video, Martenson starts talking about how the CDC was opposed to those infected passengers travelling with healthy passengers, trying to figure out who is to blame.How they separated the healthy from infected passengers with duct tape and a plastic tarp. However, all jets have air circulation systems that do not kill viruses, so any airborne virus will circulate to all parts of the cabin, especially on a long flight, which caused 25 more passengers to become infected.
For those so interested, at 11:54 Martenson talks about the balancing act needed between isolating the ill, but also having people work to keep the economy going, but also not have so many getting sick the hospitals are overwhelmed, and I think he’s broaching this idea of a balancing act, because the Chinese govt, has lowered the threat level of the virus in an effort to get people back to work. We all knew this was coming.
A few notes as I took as I listened to the video:
Actually, I think it may be good if WHO is no longer using the word pandemic. “Pandemic” scares people. I am not convinced we can gain enough time by quarantining whole communities to make the effort worthwhile. The quarantined communities see a spike in illnesses, anyhow.
To me, it is confusing if a few countries are counting cases, and other countries (including US and Canada) seem to be doing their best not to count cases. It is hard to know much about the disease, if countries everywhere are doing their best to cover up what is happening.
Perhaps covering up is the only thing that can be done, to keep the world economy from being shut down by the virus. Shutting down the world economy doesn’t work either.
WHO February 24:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/who-coronavirus-pandemic-feb-24/
“Now it’s the time to prepare. We’re in a phase of preparedness for a potential pandemic.
That doesn’t stop anyone doing what they need to do. We’ve had enough countries now import disease. It’s is time to prepare.
It is time to do everything you would do in preparing for a pandemic. But in declaring something a pandemic it’s too early.”
What the WHO say is that they ‘no longer have a process for declaring a pandemic’, which is quite different to denying that it is one. Ah, the subtlety of bureaucracies. They would define death as ‘A health emergency of great personal concern’. 🙂
Unfortunately, for the mass of people ‘pandemic’ is a word which they will only know through lurid disaster movies, in which washing carefully and wearing masks do not really feature.
And after the false security fostered by the imbecilic ‘It’s only a mild flu’ meme, they might very well go to pieces and panic.
Once again, our dumbed-down civilisation is embarrassing to observe.
Thanks! That clears up a mystery. Given the connotations of the word “pandemic” to most people, perhaps we need a different word.
An good observation, Xabier. One of the (few) good points about this “not a pandemic” is watching all those useless, bloated overpaid bureaucracies destroying their credibility on an almost daily basis. Perhaps in the aftermath we shall have the good sense to hang them.
Xabier, your Iranian friends may have been teasing you. That is the Epimenides Paradox, named after Epimenides of Knossos, who said that all Cretans are liars. It is even mentioned by St Paul (Titus i:12)
“The US added 18 more cases today for a total of 53.”
that’s it for the USA…
soon it will be all over these 50 states…
I am still in BAU mode but that could change quickly…
just one nearby community outbreak and everything will come to a standstill…
Okay, let’s chew on this for a bit, a good summary seems to be this at ZeroHedge, I list a paper referenced at the bottom with a quote. This is supposedly from Goldman, people have been aware of the issues for some time, but the trigger as far as I can tell was totally unforeseen.
ZeroHedge quote from Goldman:
“… however, risks are clearly skewed to the downside, with an increasing amount of companies suggesting potential production cuts should supply chain disruptions persist into Q2 or later. The supply chain effect is likely nonlinear with the length of the outbreak, as production is likely to remain largely unaffected until inventories run out, after which production may fall sharply”
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/goldman-issues-shocking-warning-systemic-threat-supply-chain-collapse
An original paper to these ideas is here:
http://images.feasta.org/2012/06/Trade-Off1.pdf the paper is from 2012.
The reference section at the end is impressive and maybe with a year and a incredible education in mathematics one might begin to understand it, but a summary I chose from the paper is as follows:
“Likewise, we might acknowledge that our JIT, high complexity food systems are increasingly vulnerable. But changing that system at scale would increase food prices just as discretionary income is contracting, food poverty is increasing, and our ability to service debt is being undermined by debt deflation.
Collectively, it is like we are passengers travelling in an unimaginably complex plane locked onto a perilous course. Our understanding of the engine and guidance system is partial, nor do we know many of the connections between them. We may want to change course by retooling the guidance system, but there’s a meaningful risk it will stall the engine, and we’ll plummet to the ground. Good risk management might argue that before
repairs are done, we ensure the passengers have parachutes, but time is running out, maybe it already has. ”
The mathematics is cool: Summary from what I can tell: prediction is hopeless we are “locked in” and changes introduce unknown changes to the entire system which may not be reversible – or as Gail says, we can’t go backward.
So this is kind like the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building and as he went by the 30th floor was heard to say, “So far so good.” My suggestion would be a parachute for the last 10 or so stories.
Man, it was so much easier to be retired when CD’s paid 5% and utilities 6%.
Dennis L.
This is a link to the chart Goldman shows, explaining that the risk to the economy increases (non-linearly) the longer China’s production stays way down.
https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/supply%20chain%20disruptions.jpg
Dennis, have you read a marvellously prescient story called “The Machine Stops”, published in 1909 by E M Forster? If not, you can find it here: https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf.
An excellent and very sensible article from Virology Downunder:
“We are near-certain that the desperate-sounding last-ditch containment messaging of recent days is contributing to a massive global misperception about the near-term future.
“The theme of WHO’s and many governments’ messages – that the “window of opportunity” to stop spread of the virus is closing – is like the famous cover page of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach: “There is still time … Brother.””
https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/?fbclid=IwAR1k00t23BcQolko9NjRBWjOAgf1dZ2YTf_6cIEqoYv-06uSKFc1dGDCBFU
By gad, you’re a traitor and a defeatist, Sir! It’s time we rounded up all the defeatists, herded them into the Channel Tunnel and cemented it up. And it would stop those damned Frenchies getting to England.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjEZKTr6cpM
At 2:25 of that video there is an interview with a Dr. Schermer from Germany regarding, and get this, cases of Corona Virus that have no clear link to having come from an infected person.
Scary. Clearly ET’s must be spraying us from outer space. If you see a flying saucer – RUN!
Ah yes. Obviously, the virus was engineered by bats, and is being spread by them. In retribution for our wind farms, which leave bat choppings all over the “green” world. Seriously, though, the green zealots are building wind farms on bird migratory routes, and is not that indeed a crime against Nature.
Greens represent Nature as much as many Christians have represented Christ…..
Yes, plausible, dark side of the Moon, the place where “flying mouse” civilization hidden in underground factories developed nature’s wunder weapon of the final revenge.
Or even more plausible scenario, organized sabotage of the legacy globalized system in order to launch renewed system for the different challenges in the upcoming world of less.
I’m not aware of the former, but we can “easily” identify the proponents of latter among us.
On several levels, surely this is a question for George Moonbat.
There are two types of Greenies….
The other are the worshipers of the Greenback…God Almighty Dollar!
More QE, More QE, More Plunge Protection team, More “free” unregulated Enterprise,
more bailouts of the financial system…ECT, ECT, ECT.
Check out the heavy duty personal protective masks and eyewear at the 3 min mark(china). The health workers in the USA when the princess diamond evacuees came look naked in comparison. GET WITH THE FREAKIN PROGRAM. DO WE HAVE TO REPEAT EVERY ONE OF CHINAS MISTAKES.
Should I stay or should I go….
China said it would relax its lockdown of Wuhan’s 11 million residents, only to immediately reintroduce it
sbaker@businessinsider.com (Sinéad Baker)
Business InsiderFebruary 24, 2020, 6:25 AM EST
The city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak said it would ease quarantine restrictions on its 11 million citizens, only to reverse the decision just hours later.
Wuhan announced on Monday that some people who are deemed healthy will be allowed to leave the city, whose transport links have been severed since January 23.
But authorities later said that announcement was not authorized, and called it “invalid.”
China’s decision to lock down Wuhan and nearby cities is the largest quarantine in human history, with the World Health Organization calling it an unprecedented step that’s it’s not sure will work.
The Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the deadly coronavirus outbreak, relaxed the unprecedented quarantine restrictions on its 11 million citizens on Monday, only to almost immediately reverse that decision and reimpose the lockdown of the city.
Wuhan authorities announced an easing of travel restrictions on Monday, which would allow some people to leave the city if they are deemed healthy but said those people would have to be quarantined at their destinations.
But hours later, another statement declared the first announcement “invalid” because it was made without authorization, and said that those who had made the announcement had been “severely criticized.”
The city has been under lockdown since January 23, when China cut off transport links to the city and ordered the closure of many public spaces. Footage has showed armed guards patrolling train stations, and the once-bustling city turned into a ghost town.
Now, all together sing a long The Clash…Classic and coming to a city near you!
RIP Joe Strummer….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMaE6toi4mk
https://oilprice.com/
Both WTI & Brent down over $2.00 a barrel.
WSJ: Coronavirus’s Global Spread May Not Be Contained, WHO Says
No problem, folks! Look elsewhere.
As long as Iran keeps lieing its not a pandemic. Till it gets to a country that cant lie for one reason or another. I suppose widespread is subjective. To be fair. The jury is still out. If we can keep it from getting to where it is self replicating in the population with no discernible source in Italy that will demonstrate the possibility of a much less dire outcome.
Pandemic has such negative connotations. Why dont we rename it flubug19xtrapower and leave it at that.
I saw that the WHO ‘no longer has a process for declaring an epidemic’: this is therefore a Health Emergency of International Concern’ in their current terminology…..
“No problem, folks! Look elsewhere.”
Oh, good, because I was really starting to get concerned, much like the stock market investors that panicked today. Maybe the market will rally tomorrow based on those soothing words from the WHO. Of course I’m being sarcastic, because this virus seems like it’s launching missiles that detonate with super spreading capability.
I looked back at WSJ article to see what it says about WHO’s view of the use of the word pandemic. It says,
This differs from what Chris Martenson reported in his latest video (shown in another comment). Chris said that WHO had stopped using the world pandemic.
It isn’t pandemic; it’s pandemonium!
Oh, Tim, such a loss of faith! My own belief is that the WHO will declare it not a pandemonium until a certain Ethiopian had been “persuaded” to declare it one. The Powers That Be are still safely in control.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/us-futures-coronavirus-outbreak.html
‘Dow plunges 1,000 points, gives up gain for the year’
At the moment the down is actually a bit less than a thousand at -965.
Correction; The Dow, not the down, although the Dow is down…
WTI is now $50.82, down 4.80%
Yes, my pet theory of not falling oil price is not working (for today).
Lets wait for longer exposures still..
Maybe The Donald will take notice now and get home from his pleasure jaunt to the TAJ. At least he doesnt golf… 🙂
Now they’re calling it ‘disease X’. And I just called Xabier ‘Doctor X’.
Anyone been to the doctor’s yet?
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjIxMDg3NDYyN15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjUyNzc5MTE@._V1_.jpg
Almost as stylish as your favourite Anglo-Spanish correspondent, but not quite.
Let’s re-watch all the quality Dracula movie adaptations again (non Hollywood).
It’s all there, gang of vampires feeding on human (babies) blood, seeking to branch out into new base in London (City) as the key global hub at that point.
Huge numbers of Westerners drink blood already. It’s rife among Catholics – they drink the blood of Jesus Christ, you know. 🙁
Here those degenerates from Monty Python dress up as women and meet Death himself. Warning: Death has some strong anti-American attitudes. 🙂
I have on my computer all the vintage Hammer vampire movies, from Dracula (1958) to Vampire Circus (1972). Absolute classics. And, of course, he Vincent Price Masque of the Red Death. Good food for Schadenfreude.
Nosferatu 1922 & 1979?
How a bit of death in Venice? Ah, the nostalgia of watching your life flash before you.
“Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens”? Yes indeed, the 1922 version, remastered in 720p and with English intertitles. And not, definitely not, the remake.
I like the remake.
And everything else Herzog+Kinski.
Another good Herzog movie is Happy People he cut & narrated about a small very isolated village in Siberia.
From Wikipedia:
“The Great Leap Forward [ironic name] resulted in tens of millions of deaths. A lower-end estimate is 18 million and upper estimates find that some 45 million people died. About the same number of births were lost or postponed, making the Great Chinese Famine the largest in human history.”
“The Cultural Revolution damaged China’s economy while tens of millions of people were persecuted, with an estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to 20 million.”
————-
Next, the Chinese got jealous of us Westerners and dived massively into productivism and mercantilism, and who knows, probably adding to worldwide deflation. It has been calculated that China uses as much cement per year as the USA did in the whole of the 20th century. Consider what part that must have played in stoking the massive fires and pollution we have seen around the world.
And now China has unleashed this ghastly disease on the world. Truly the country has a lot to answer for. Meanwhile the country has lost hundreds of millions of pigs to swine fever – half the countr’y’s pigs, by some estimates.
Elsewhere, plagues of locusts are eating all the crops they can find in South West Asia and North and Central Africa. What will that do to harvests and food prices?
The Australian bush fires killed around a billion animals, according to estimates. What’s playing out around the world is like a bad science fiction film. Had anybody made a film like that, they’d have been told it was way too melodramatic and OTT. No wonder certain Christians think we are in the end days, awaiting The Rapture. Now I’m even wondering if we’re in the Matrix, so weird is to see all these overlapping catastrophes.
But with a death rate of around 2 percent, plenty of us will survive. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, but I don’t worry about it. But as the Chinese saying goes, we are certainly living in interesting times.
I think your description of recent events resembling a bad science fiction movie is spot on. It just goes to show how difficult it is to understand the world and predict the future (or maybe not, because science fiction writers seem able to do it).
Prepare for the worst, and you won’t be disappointed. 🙂
I don’t think that the death rate is as low as 2%, especially if there is not adequate hospital and intensive care facilities. It could very well be 5% to 15%. We need to be able to look at better data.
If the infections become so large as to overwhelm such medical treatment as there is (basically treating associated opportunistic bacterial co-infections) – then the death rates will rise – a lot.
“The mean annual global influenza-associated respiratory mortality rate per 100 000 was 5.9, with regional estimates ranging from 4.5 in Eastern Mediterranean to 6.2 in the America
Global seasonal flu deaths were 5.9/100.000 (.0059%).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/
Where as COVID-19 currently has 79,774 infections with 2,629 deaths – a 3.29% mortality rate of the infected.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
From WSJ: Coronavirus Tests Europe’s Open Borders as Italy Death Toll Rises
Schools are closed and gatherings are banned as Italy reports a sixth virus-related death
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/disrupted-area-of-italy-by-coronavirus-feb-24.png
Nature tends to create flu virus that are equal opportunity infectors, not ethic selective. Consider that in a comparably homogeneous E. Asian population like China and its neighbors with high percentages of ethic Chinese derived populations, there would be little selective pressure in the wild selectively cause the virus to be east Asian genome targeting.
COVID-19 has all the ear marks of an attempt to create an Ethnic BioWeapon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_bioweapon) to target East Asian populations. Such an ethnic bioweapon has been technically feasible for decades and has long been a topic of apocalyptic fiction.
Now the question becomes : If COVID-19 is proven to be an bioweapon – especially an ethnic bioweapon – whether it was created in China to trim China’s surplus and unsustainable over population and increase political stability for a gov. already know for its population engineering efforts? Or, whether it was created by the West and or US, to protect western economies from being overwhelmed by the rapidly global domination of the Chinese export economy?
In either case, Wuhan was the most obvious strategic point of origin, Either from the Western or Chines ethnic bioweapon stand point – because Wuhan is the only known BSL4 – Lab in China for handling, manipulating this kind of pathogen. Both the point of origin, timing, and its benefits to the West (i.e. the Trump Trade Wars) are very suspicious. Both cases China or Western ethnic bioweapon usage have very serious long term global implications both economically, politically and socially.
But if it’s an equal opportunity infector, why would anybody order it to be unleashed, knowing that they too might be infected? It would require a kamikaze attitude to execute such a plan. It’s just way too James Bond to be taken seriously.
You missed my point. Unlike the other Asian flu virus, COVID-19 has a documented (as Gail noted) preference for infecting east Asians of Chinese genetic origin – over those of European and or African origin.. Consider all the coincidences with COVID19:
TIMING – It occurs just in time for the Chinese New Year where traditionally most Chinese travel to their place of birth t celebrate it = maximum dispersion of infection.
LOCATION – COVID-19 point of origin is Wuhan – the location of China’s only BSL-4 and as if Wuhan was the only city with wild animal markets for a animal to human viral jump as some have projected.
ECONOMICS – It occurs in the midst of the Trump Trade War and when it showed little economic impact on China.
POLITICS – COVID-19 began well before the Trump impeachment senate trial, It also provided distraction from China’s political problems in Hong Kong.
But anybody who’d thought this through would know it would also take down supply lines. Mind you, Trump is not the brightest of fellows, if he really had anything to do with this – and that’s a big if.
DJT is ~third tear almost billionaire (not picking on him) encircled by backstabbing mob of gov staffers working for much higher (perennial) powers. He doesn’t have to and did not approve any of this..
It’s apparent, taking down the supply lines is a desirable key feature to them, basically to create a havoc atmosphere during which you can phase in whatever preplanned agendas.
Tears are for fears, meant “second tier” instead..
Trump thinks that if the Chinese economy is taken down US suppliers and mfgrs. will quickly fill the gap. Of course this is far from reality – of that the US consumer could afford the resulting inflating outcome. Expecting this administration to make logical economic conclusions and decisions on most any thing beyond the most short term (re-election basis has repeatedly been – far too great of an expectation.
Mr. DD, yes there are coincidences happening in this world occasionally, but when these are ALWAYS playing in the cards of one particular power faction (CBs cartel) it’s beyond fishy, it’s actually silly these kindergarten crowd methods did work for so long..
They propped up China, now they demoted China.
Next steps will be revealed shortly, either attempted de-globalization plateau or perhaps even more daring plan for dragging us all into depop and techno feudalism shortly.
Wouldn’t the West/US be shooting themselves in the head by destroying China’s production capabilities? I think in short order, especially with today’s market meltdown (PPT doesn’t seem up to the task) we are going to have one of those moments when the tide goes out and we finally get to see who has been swimming without bathing suits.
It won’t destroy China’s production ability as much as effects their economics. China’s current GDP is 3-4x higher than the US’s. If you believe limiting China’s economic expansion is better for the US/West – like the current short term focused administration – then such an act is well within their interests universe of options – if not your or my interests.
Right. Bad wording on my part. The production capabilities would still be there, but nothing would be getting produced. I still think that the result for the West/USA would be disastrous. Anyway, a good reminder that I need to get out this weekend and buy some comfortable working/walking boots.
I don’t think that China’s GDP is 3 to 4 times higher than the US’s. I think that the amount of manufactured goods and energy intensive intermediate products is way higher than that of the US. This is an IEA chart of industrial energy consumption of some major economies for the year 2016:
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/iea-industrial-consumption-of-energy-2016.png
You are very correct. I miss wrote. output. I was referring to economic growth rates not GDP as I mistakenly said.
China’s is over 6% and US’s is under 2% and I do like your using energy indicator for mfg. China’s mfg. sector is about 40+% pf their economy whereas US mfg. is less than 11% of the economy and only 8% of employment. However, the US imports 54% of its raw materials and intermediate goods from China. As well about 85% of its rare earth metals are also imported from China. The will feel some economic impacts from in US mfg. and the retail economy.
Is there any way to edit our comments on your site?
I can edit comments but you cannot, unfortunately.
Unfortunate, for those of us that mis-write. Better proofing required, obviously. In any case thank you for taking the time to respond.
•Italy reports sixth coronavirus death.
DD,
Please analyze – Why oh why did someone create a bioweapon to target Italians as well as Chinese?
War gamed well in advance, hence allowing for various course correction maneuvers later aka now.
The public space has been saturated by hints and rumors of deliberate action already.
So, it’s either high time to release more “whitey” friendly mutation now as cover up for the main Asian target or the macro game is rather about global depop incl. other races and continents, and they are releasing it in measured stages.
Also, there could be the possibility of an error.
I read two of the six deaths in Italy were Chinese. If it is an ethnic bioweapon – who knows how many genes of your past ancestry (regardless of your racial appearance) might be necessary to provide more optimum target sites for COVID-19 infection. Italy has the largest Chinese population in Europe. A little over a half-percent of the Italian population has Chinese ethnicity – and who knows what Chinese alleles others might have. Italy has been a favorite travel destination for the Chinese since Marco Polo. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_people_in_Italy)
It appears to be equally affecting Iranians and Italians, so an ‘ethnic’ theory has effectively bitten the dust.
As the evidence changes I change my mind, what do you do DD??
What evidence? Do you have ancestral genetics of the those involved?
The Iranians certainly seem to be dying of it. I don’t know if they are all elderly Iranians, though.
Additionally, reports that COVID-19 recovered patients are being re-infected suggests the original COVID-19 virus is mutating to sufficiently defeat the specific immune system recognition of those that have survived an infection. If the COVID-18 was an ethnic bioweapon – there is no guarantee of how it would mutate from its original design and whether any original ethno-specificity would remain intact or broaden.
Whether the ACE2 part of this is true we dont know. George washingtons post earlier comes to mind. If ACE2 is true who knows. I think your digging a little deep. I think its probable it escaped containment from the BSL4 lab. If ACE2 is true i dont think they knew that. We just dont know. It could be a single crazy scientist in the lab. Whats clear is bio weapons can not be handled with the same level of security that nuclear weapons can. Because any one human can become the bio weapon AND deliver the strike. The precautions put in place with nuclear weapons to avert madmen can not be employed with bio weapons.
“its trumps fault”
More probable the crooks in the DNC released it to derail trumps certain reelection after their failed coup attempts. Just kidding of course… 🙂
From WSJ: With Migrant Workers in Limbo, Part of China’s Economy Is Stalled Many must choose the least-bad option: Stay in their hometowns without jobs, or return to expensive cities and a 14-day quarantine
So maybe the current scare can reinforce behaviors that should have been in place before, and should be in the future: Keep a month’s store of food and water at home at all times. This is (with luck) a shot across the bow, foretelling the future. I probably won’t do it though.
It’s how everyone used to live if they could, as plagues and wars were such regular occurrences interrupting trade and food supplies.
“Even if you come back, you still don’t have work to do. The factories are closed.”
This is looking really bad. No wonder the Dow is dumping today.
Either China is lying by orders of magnitude or they should have just done nothing.
China is lying. They probably know that this is an engineered virus as well, so extra virulent.
The virus fills up all hospital beds and intensive care beds for relatively long periods for each illness. Once these beds are filled up, it is hard to care for many more. China has apparently appropriated hotels for this purpose and built new facilities, but the amount of care that can actually be given, with staff stretched too thin, is very limited.
The subdivision I’m living in in Adelaide, Australia has narrowish streets which often feel awkward to drive as they fill up with cars. But the original designers had double garages in each home so that they wouldn’t need to park kerbside! What could have gone wrong?
Go to maps google and pick a random mega-city in China 🇨🇳. In satellite mode view the countless tower blocks, up to 30 per city block, and think ‘hospitals’ ….could there ever be enough?!?
No one wants to be the one in high school with STD. Thats how countries are acting. I dont know if they are avoiding stigma or dont want their business deals quashed. If the numbers rumored out of Iran are true this is clearly a pandemic. Italy alone should qualify this for pandemic status. How about SK? How about NK? Borders shut with Iran? Theres supposedly only a couple dozen cases in Iran but a dozen fatalities? get real.
I understand we dont want people to panic. I hope this comes and goes with every ounce of my being. Shouldnt we prepare based on the reality of what we are facing? When does misinformation help you make correct decisions? Never.
It might come and go. It might. Id rather be embarrassed then than unprepared now.
This is not your fathers virus.
So far, 16,000 people [in US] have died and 280,000 people have been hospitalized during the 2019-2020 flu season, according to preliminary estimates from the CDC.
2600 world wide from CV2019.
What am I missing?
Yes I wonder the same
That this is turning into a pandemic for which there is no vaccine and no herd immunity, and which can totally overwhelm national healthy systems, to say nothing of the havoc it is wreaking on supply-chains and the global economy.
This is highly transmissible and, I think we can safely say, has a much higher fatality rate than flu.
The comparisons to endemic flu need to stop. This is a whole different ballgame.
The meme ‘Flu kills way more people, so chill!’ was started to allay fears, avert panic and ensure that people were happy with continued global travel; but it has created a false sense of optimism, even dismissive or mocking attitudes, which will backfire very badly when serious casualties start to occur. It’s also making it harder for more sensible people to prepare their family and friends. How careful one has to be with slogans….
I think the meme that flu is more dangerous is valid if one believes all of the official reports. That includes a lot of well-meaning people who aren’t necessarily trying to engage in a propaganda war, including many disease experts. As many have noted, there are all kinds of problems with the official stats (such as insufficient/poor tests, limited/biased testing, etc. etc.). I personally believe the coronavirus is more dangerous, but only on the basis of government reactions to the epidemics — their reactions are about the only semi-objective information available. Like others, I believe the official reports are lies. I think that governments would not be committing economic suicide unless the disease was destroying communities with high mortality.
The flu virus has been endemic for a long time, the corona virus a very short period. We don’t know, our guesses will probably not be right; the guesses it is similar to the flu seem very likely to be wrong.
The flu leitmotif seems to be repeated most by people who have no real solutions and employ the metaphor as a soothing saying, it gives comfort, perhaps mostly to themselves.
There is nothing wrong with comfort, a mother kisses the bruise of her child to make it better, probably not but the child knows someone cares, it is someone they trust, and if they say it will be better, it will be better. What is important is the mother not lie, disclosure of all consequences is not necessary, but a lie causes loss of trust; that is a tragedy for both.
What we may see is an incredible change in our social systems in a very short period of time.
So in my opinion, you are missing the need for hope.
Dennis L.
Thank you, Dennis. People know about Pandora’s Box, but many of them do not know that the last thing present in it was hope. As to how that hope was released, run and find out.
‘Hope is born of lack of hope. A valuable posture, I agree.
The comparison to influenza may or may not be a accurate model. The RO transmission of the flu is generally considered about one. We dont know what the true r0 of cv19 is. It may be that the r0 metric is not adequate to define cv 19s contagiousness. I would guess a r0 of at least a 4 is appropriate.
We do no that cv19 has defeated standard isolation procedures. We do know that it spread through a large city killing many and paralyzing the economy of the whole country. we do know that cv19 has defeated standard medical personal protective equipment and procedures. We do know that cv19 has multiple transmission paths.
Instead of comparing cv19 to influenza lets compare it to ebola to polio to smallpox to malaria to dengue fever.
Do you want those around?
We have herd immunity to influenza. Unless your spawned from a bat there is none for cv19. The flu comparison might well be accurate however. Infuenza has not been eradicated. It comes and goes every year. It has a peak and then lessens.
What if the flu season effected 4x a many people with a much larger percentage of them requiring intensive care and dying?
This thing probably will be like the flu in some ways. Some not. large portions of the population may get it when it makes its first sweep. 80 20 5. 80% like a cold. 20% oxygen and hospitalization. 5% ICU. Then it will be with us for a while. maybe a long time. Will our body create strong enough antibodies to develop herd immunity to cv19? It could happen. It has happened with influenza.
If CV19 is no big deal- not even in the news next valentines i think it should be pointed out how the concern over it was unfounded.
I sure hope so. I like my BAU. I like my fly fishing.
Italy:
This AM’s post by Dr. Campbell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C-NpadSNuA
I am starting to like this guy, he is calm and avoids hyperbole. He apparently also has a number of videos on medical conditions, his explanations are clear and concise.
Gail once wondered why this region of Italy which is an industrial area, not a tourist area.
Dr.Campbell’s posits there are a number of undocumented Chinese workers who have come to Italy through third countries, hence not directly from China and thus avoiding travel restrictions. Additionally, Italy has good public health reporting so they are on top of it.
Campbell also thinks the rate of increase in China may well be flattening out and relates the rate of increase to our ability to meet those health needs with the current health infrastructure – specifically ICU beds.
Robert mentions panspermia and Arrhenius in the same sentence and I am having difficulty following the connection. Knoweldge is a wonderful thing and reading Robert I am often times envious of his wide and apparently deep knowledge of literature and history.
This is an interesting site with branches to many other interesting sites. Campbell’s site was first mentioned here as I recall.
Dennis L.
Dennis, thank you for your kind comments. Panspermia was first proposed by Anaxagoras in the 5th century BC, but it was placed on a respectable scientific basis by Svante Arrhenius. Who also, by the way, was one of the first “global warming” alarmists,
To give him his due, Svante Arrhenius was by no means an alarmist. He speculated, quite reasonably, that modest global warming would make the world a better place for just about everyone. The modern alarmists hold up Arrhenius as a scientific hero to boost their credibility, while conveniently ignoring that important but inconvenient fact about the man’s opinions.
All this is by the by, by the way, as another Swedish scientist, Knut Ångström demonstrated unequivocally by means of experiment that the Arrhenius hypothesis about warming was wrong.
Thank you, Tim, and I accept the correction.
I still have a hard time believing that a great deal of isolation is going to fix the situation by much. It will leave the economy shut down for longer, which is a huge problem. Food supplies will be reduced and debt defaults will skyrocket. Many more people will die because of economic problems (cannot afford food, for example), rather than directly coronavirus problems.
Slowing down the coronavirus spread will mean that instead of having 1% of the intensive care beds we need, perhaps we will have 3% or 5% of the intensive care beds we need. We will have perhaps a month or two longer to look for drugs that we could ramp up to fight the illness. It will help a little, but basically not a whole lot. We certainly will not have a vaccine ready.
A person really needs to look at the plusses and minuses in a more objective way before deciding that spreading out the disease over a long period is necessarily desirable. Perhaps we should be rationing what medical facilities we have. Priority will need to be given to caring for young people who are hit particularly hard, for example, rather than helping elderly people who have many other diseases simultaneously. And, like Wuhan, it may be necessary to kick people out of hospitals before they are fully well, to free up beds.
Dr. Campell’s view is definitely like that of a virologist.
Does Dr. Campbell really think that China’s efforts to stop the virus spread have been successful within China? The reported number is now at something like 80,000 cases, while China’s population is something like 1.4 billion. One percent of China’s population would be 14 million people. Why in the world is China concerned about an illness that affects a tiny fraction of 1% of its people. 80,000/14,000,000=.006
At this rate, the infection can go on for thousands of years, before the entire population of China is affected. Something is wrong with this view.
Coronavirus deaths are still a small fraction of pneumonia deaths each year in China.
From 2010:
Pneumonia is one of the leading causes of death in adults and children in China. In urban areas, pneumonia is the fourth leading cause of death, and in rural areas pneumonia is the leading cause of death. A recent article in the Chinese literature estimated that each year in China there are 2.5 million patients with pneumonia and that 125,000 (5%) of these patients die of pneumonia-related illness. A 2008 global review by Rudan and colleagues estimated that there were 21.1 million new cases of clinical pneumonia annually in China in children under 5 years of age (0.22 episodes/person-year), which is second only to India in burden (43.0 million new cases, 0.37 episodes/person-year) [3]. Available estimates of the burden of childhood pneumonia in China vary widely, and pneumonia accounts for an estimated 17% of all child deaths in China and 67% of all childhood pneumonia deaths in the Western Pacific region/
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0011721
I remember reading some book by Fred Hoyle, who mentioned the Spanish flu. He spoke of the Earth passing through the tail of a comet at the time.For the ancients, comets were portents of disaster, as they often seemed to bring disease in their wake. Hoyle mentioned the dirty ice in comets as a suspect. He wrote of how one isolated Alaskan community, miles from anywhere and not having had outside contact since the summer, started going down with the flu in the winter, then before then end of the week it turned up in Bombay! This was decades before the frequent air travel and holidaying of later years.
Who’d’ve thought we’d get another flu around a century after the earlier one? I always wondered how the world’s population would ever push up to the estimated 10 billion mark, but now it seems Mother Earth is taking a stand against that.
Of course, there are other theories. I remember that a couple of years ago Gail boldly claimed that we had about 2 years before collapse. Then she disappeared off to China. And two years later, look what’s happened. And look where it’s emanating from. Could it in fact be that Gail is the hidden hand that she has spoken of? Was that an ’embedded confession’, as the statement analysts like to put it?
No smoke without fire, perhaps. How will we find out if Gail has indulged in unAmerican activities? Who should investigate – Trump? Superman? (Assange is in captivity now).
Meanwhile Gail has her acolytes putting out her doomy message on other sites. I think of Doctor X (a.k.a. Xabier), spreading the despondent word here and on ‘Surplus Energy’. Beware of those whose name starts with ‘X’ in these times. 🙁
I love Xabier stories about traditional ways in Spain. Speaking of Spain any reactioon to CV2019 in Spain?
Despondent? I’m a cheerful chap, if you met me you’d never guess the truth….. 🙂
Indifference In Spain: it has barely registered so far but now Italy has blown up it may change. The ‘it’s only a kind of flu’ meme has lulled people into complacency, and it’s holiday time so who wants to be gloomy?
Thanks for making me think of Spain: time for something nice in a big glass, from Catalonia or maybe Murcia. Not that I really needed the prompt…..
Yes, drink and be merry, Doctor X, for soon we must die.
‘And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.’
https://www.poemuseum.org/the-masque-of-the-red-death
I’ve heard that ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ is a good book, but I’ve never read it. Maybe now is the time.
It’s brilliant. Garcia’s best novel IMHO. At least in the English version. The depictions and descriptions of the townscape of the decayed port city, of Columbia as a wounded civilization and of the ecological blight ravaging the place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is so masterfully done that I felt I was actually there. Also the story itself and the character depictions are masterful, entertaining and engrossing.
But as a classic novel to read just now, I would recommend The Plague by Albert Camus.
Why not get copies of both, disinfect them, and take them with you into your self-imposed quarantine. The time will pass much more sweetly in their company.
Ah, Xabier, the wines of Spain! The Rioja, aged at least one year in wood. And the many varieties of Cava, so cooling in tropical Singapore. One of the better selling brands there was called “sueño”, though I never found anyone who knew what the name meant. (But then, who today has read Pedro Calderón de la Barca? Not I, for one.) Unfortunately, it was not very good. I stuck with Codorniu or, when I could get it at a discount, Juve y Camps. Arriba! Abajo!
And by the way, some Maltese wine is eminently drinkable.
First amendment constitution USA.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Any restriction of this is in fact “unamerican”. Is DrJohn Cambell “unamerican too”?
Lets say this is nothing. It comes and goes with minimal impact. Will any damage have been done by understanding the risk? NO.
On the other hand let us say the tiger is a mouse as it approaches even as it growls at us and then it eats us. Damage will have been done.
Understanding the issues and implementing appropriate action is in interest of all countries. Unwillingness to understand the issues and come up with the best plan we can works against the welfare of humans and the things that sustain them.
Attacking ideas that address the reality of the situation and make you feel uncomfortable and thinking they will go away is not sane.
I am afraid that there is nothing unAmerican going on.
The people in China really liked it if I could help them with their academic papers. They needed both ideas and someone who knew English better than they did. This is a link to an article (published in the journal Energy) pointing out that the limit to oil production in China seems to be how high prices can rise. The higher the prices are able to rise, the more oil that can be extracted.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/ke-wang-an-oil-production-forecast-for-china-considering-economic-limits.pdf
Yes, I was pulling your leg, of course, Gail. And the Chinese were very lucky to have you. In these strange times, people are liable to run with all sorts of strange theories, though, but at least they don’t know your address. 😉
Ah yes “just kidding”. and talking about where Gail lives.
“When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
Julius Caesar, Act II scene ii. It is Calpurnia speaking, begging her husband not to go to the Senate on that morning of 15 March. And yes, there were reports of a comet the night before. But, once again, we are back to Arrhenius’ “panspermia”.
It seems possible that comets bring flu viruses, or something that leads to flu viruses, from outside the earth’s own ecosystem.
Weird, that would be consistent with old “myths” having the gods send down pain and sorrow to the earth below from the heavens above no less.
It makes one wonder how many “wive’s tales” are consistent with reality and while not explanative are inconvenient truths.
That would be an interesting Ph.D. thesis in literature, examine old myths and see how accurately they statistically align with what is observed. Perhaps earn a degree and never, ever get a teaching job.
Dennis L.
The English word “influenza” comes from the Italian word of the same name, literally ‘influence’, from medieval Latin influentia. The Italian word also has the sense ‘an outbreak of an epidemic’, hence ‘epidemic’. It was applied specifically to an influenza epidemic which began in Italy in 1743, later adopted in English as the name of the disease. the Latin word “influentia” also had the specific meaning “influence of the stars.” It was noticed that when influenza hit Europe in 1743, that it spread faster than man or beast could travel, and this fed speculation in the 20th century that it might have fallen like the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath, rather than traveling by an animal vector. These days the stars are no longer blamed for the flu, and well they should not be, but perhaps the comets have a hand in it.
“but perhaps the comets have a hand in it.”
Or maybe just a tail, since they don’t have hands. 😉
Tim, it spread faster than man or (four legged) beast could travel, but not as fast as birds can fly. It is believed that they were the main means of transmission, because humans can catch bird flu and vice versa. Conjecture only: few people were keeping hard information or even knew how to obtain it.
Insurrection on your doorstep, Robert – time to have a firm word with those stevedores!
“Maltese chandlers and port workers in Paola and Valletta have stopped their operations over coronavirus fears, refusing to board vessels coming from Italy to unload cargo.”
https://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/100574/coronavirus_fears_prompt_maltese_port_workers_to_refuse_to_handle_incoming_cargo?fbclid=IwAR3Ruw3Jw37ehITKd0_XM4-boX2GQZLzpYKABR1X5c6W4Pw4M3jr-OelbJw#.XlT76yj7TIU
For Harry McGibbs: My calm and considered response: AARGH! The supply chain from Italy is indeed critical to the Maltese economy (and of course to my regular consumption of wine), but I can understand their reluctance, especially because we now know that the virus can be spread by inanimate objects. Well, perhaps something will be done; if not, I have about 3 weeks supply of food, and the local shops offer a lot of local produce.
Gozo has a population of about 32,000, and an area of 6700 hectares. It could get by (just) with local farming, but we might have to eat cactus. Hmm… time to get in another twelve litres of Vino Italiano.
‘That would be an interesting Ph.D. thesis in literature, examine old myths and see how accurately they statistically align with what is observed.’
One of the most stunning books I read in recent years was ‘Parallels: Ancient Insights into Modern YOOFO Phenomena’ by the late Richard L Thompson. I’ve deliberately misspelled ‘YOOFO’ as it’s a forbidden word here! The book deals with Hindu cosmology and how it explains much of the para normal.
It ties in well with Michael Cremo’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOBqpjkKkC4
And look at episode 6 of the History Channel’s ‘Un~iden~tified’ series and be astonished.
Also useful to read Forbidden Archaeology by Thompson and Michael Cremo, and watch their videos on that subject, to see that there is physical evidence for these cycles of time.
This is an interesting hypothesis, but it would seem extremely unlikely that viruses are lurking space. But it does bring up the puzzle of near simultaneous global flu epidemics, which occurred prior to fast air travel as you note. I’ve studied the spread of respiratory infections and for the most part, precisely how they spread is a matter of speculation, not evidence. This is particularly true for flu. One hypothesis related to Hoyle’s is that flu viruses tend to emerge in east Asia (especially China), cause local epidemics, and the viral particles get airborne and stick to dust particles (often from Mongolian deserts). The jet stream carries them east and dumps them on the continents, possibly accounting, in part, for the emergence of epidemics worldwide in close succession. This hypothesis is also very speculative but fairly easy to test. But because it flies in the face of conventional belief, no one has tried to test it, as far as I know.
Just a reminder, if any were needed, that the global economy in 2019 was already awash with unprecedented levels of debt and teetering on the brink of recession (ie less than 3% growth for the totality), with protectionism on the rise, and subsets like trade, manufacturing and car sales contracting.
Now we have the coronavirus on top:
“…the coronavirus continues to spread, and there are signs that some of the world’s top economies could slide into recession as the outbreak compounds pre-existing weaknesses.
“Take Japan: The world’s third-largest economy shrank 1.6% in the fourth quarter of 2019… Then there’s Germany. The biggest economy in Europe ground to a halt right before the coronavirus outbreak set in, dragged down by the country’s struggling factories…
“…[a] number of smaller economies that are hurting, too. Hong Kong is in recession and Singapore could soon suffer a similar fate. Fourth quarter GDP data from Indonesia hit a three-year low, while Malaysia had its worst reading in a decade…
“Meanwhile, engines of growth like China and India slowed in 2019… All of this brings to the fore concerns about the global economy’s ability to withstand a shock from the coronavirus.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/23/investing/stocks-week-ahead/index.html
Pre-existing weaknesses: in economies, in our bodies – ‘as above so below’…….
Anyway, to Hell with that: we are all survivors here. What are we? Survivors!
Keep that in mind, everyone.
There are really two different kinds of shocks:
1. The shock from the illness itself, including the illnesses and deaths it causes.
2. The shock from the measures taken to contain the spread of the illness.
The economy is so close to the tipping point that it is quite possible that either of these would push the economy over the edge. Putting the two together seems to guarantee that we are encountering a new, more certain part of Limits to Growth.
This is a Limits to Growth chart to which I added a 2019 line, a little over a year ago. We were near the edge in 2019, because world auto sales were slowing and cement manufacture was slowing. Now we seem to be starting the sliding down process. All of the outstanding outstanding debt in China and Italy pretty much guarantees a financial problem will come out of all of the shut downs.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/1972-base-limits-to-growth-forecast-with-2019-dotted-line.png
“The overall global economic impact of coronvirus is set to be “bigger than the US-China trade war”, according to a report by a leading trade payments insurer.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/22/coronavirus-isnt-brought-heel-economic-bedlam-awaits/
“Dr Bharat Pankhania, a clinical lecturer at Exeter University, told The Daily Telegraph: “It is clear that all the important ingredients for a pandemic are now present. It’s better to be honest and say it.””
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-latest-uk-cases-pandemic-infections-outbreak-wuhan-europe-covid-19-a9353891.html
I don’t know what companies are “trade payments insurers,” but I would bet that these insurers are not long for this world. The same with trip travel insurers.
AIG is one of them…..I guess the FED will have to step in again.
http://insurance-companies.co/credit-insurance-companies/
AIG has been the company that doesn’t worry much about risk. There aren’t many AIG actuaries at conferences, generally.
““The major central banks all face similar problems, including how to deal with another economic downturn,” said an executive of one of the banks present at the G20 meeting.
““They’ve been discussing this topic for a while. It’s about time they come up with some form of conclusion,” he said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-saudi-cenbank-analysis/in-riyadh-top-central-bankers-unsettled-by-shifting-sands-of-inflation-idUSKCN20H0EC
“Global investors are being overly complacent about downside economic risks, aggravated but not limited to the growing impact of coronavirus… they are overestimating the power of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the global economic party going.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/21/investors-need-to-face-the-warning-signs-in-the-global-economy.html
“It has taken a massive amount of interventions by central banks to keep economies afloat globally over the last decade, and there is rising evidence that growth is beginning to decelerate.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4326455-macroview-japan-fed-and-limits-of-qe
Wait until we start seeing massive debt defaults in China and Italy. Closing down big pieces of the economy doesn’t make much sense. Italy was close to the edge on quite a bit debt already.
To paraphrase an old saying: If the only tool you have is money, every problem looks like a wallet.
Beware of powerful people with delusions of competence.
“Last week, the 30-year Treasury yield hit an all-time low at 1.97%. This is a major warning that the bond market is sending to us. It is telling us that growth is in free fall… There are multiple signs of a weakening [US] economy here. First of all, we see that trade is coming to a standstill as freight rates have hit a new low for the decade…
“Second, the manufacturing and services PMI just went into contraction. This means that GDP is going to start contracting as well.”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4326497-federal-reserve-failed-to-jump-start-economy
““One group of [US] consumers is doing well. They have rising incomes, and they can afford the surging home prices, the surging health-care costs, and the surging new-vehicle prices,” he wrote.
““There are other consumers whose incomes have not budged much. They have jobs but are living paycheck to paycheck, and not because they’re splurging but because, at their level of the economy, prices of basic goods and services have run away from them.””
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/proof-that-the-booming-economy-isnt-working-for-a-chunk-of-the-population-2020-02-23
“The New York Fed said 11.1% for all student loans were in default or seriously delinquent (more than 90 days past due) during the fourth-quarter, but included the caveat that it is actually likely twice as high, given that roughly half of student loans are in some form of deferment, grace period or forbearance, and not counted as in “repayment.””
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-record-one-quarter-of-450-billion-of-student-loans-are-being-repaid-on-income-based-repayment-plans-dbrs-2020-02-22
These poor people with student loans are also deferring other things that they might do with their lives. They are getting married later, or not at all. They are less likely to buy a home. The student debt disrupts the economy in many ways, besides not really being repayable by a lot of the students.
Institutions and what in effect are self serving well wishers have stolen our children’s future in order to preserve/improve the older generations future. I see Robert says the same thing below.
In the past the old age of the parents was dependent to a great degree on how well they had treated their children and for how long. Simple NPV calculations would make a good first order approximation that the eldest inherits the farm, the remainder in feudal times ride off to fame and gory.
Enough said,
Dennis L.
Sigh. It seems big government liberals never learn from their mistakes, and keep making them. Once again: every subsidy given to consumers is seized by producers, who either raise prices or offer goods of lower quality at the same price. The universities did both, raising their fees and also introducing new degrees whose graduates were essentially unemployable, because they learned nothing of relevance to the real world. Take a major in “Women, Gender and Sexuality” (yes, it’s real, and offered by Harvard, no less), and you had better take a minor in burger flipping or toilet cleaning.
So many exploited graduates could have earned a very good living as plumbers. electricians, etc, at least in the UK.
An electrician was boasting to a friend of mine the other day that he could ‘write his own cheques’. The friend was potential customer……
That’s why I like the Poles, they gave a wake up call to people like that.
One of the finest bookbinders in the country retrained as a gas-fitter after his patron Paul Getty died, and paid the private school fees of his children doing so. Smart move.
I don’t think Harvard is really the best example but I get your point. Until recently, any degree from Harvard would be enough. Either you were legacy and didn’t have to worry about it, or you made enough networking connections (it is who you know, not what you know) that you could land a good gig with one of your successful room-mates as a VP in HR or Diversity.
A very fair point, ssincoski, and I agree. All elites tend to be self perpetuating, ever since the “kaloi k’agathoi” of Ancient Greece. But the expansion of the universities in the second half of the twentieth century persuaded a lot of the non elite that a degree was the highway to fortune, if not fame. Kingsley Amis’ acerbic comment “more means worse” was reviled at the time, and still is today, but I think he has been vindicated by history.
One of the few advantages of a long life is that Time slowly helps you distinguish wisdom from folly. As Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra said, some four hundred years ago.
major fail:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/failed-quarantine-diamond-princess-cruise-120200145.html
“From a virologist’s perspective, a cruise ship with a large number of persons on board is more an incubator for viruses rather than a good place for quarantine…”
It is so hard to separate fact from fiction concerning the virus outbreak. It seems completely out of character for so many responsible for disease control to be making so many critical mistakes. I even knew the cruise ship was a disaster and the people needed to be removed and quarantined in a hospital like setting. How can those in charge be making so many critical mistakes? Then a number of the cruise ship passengers were flown on an airline with un-infected persons. That is just plain crazy! One would get the impression that global CDC’s want this to spread.
The cost of providing separate transport for sick patients is just too high. And people will not believe how easily this virus is to transmit from one person to another. Also, they can’t tell who really is sick. Three more passengers came down with what appeared to be the illness, during the flight across the ocean.
Yes, but a lot of people who OKed this thought it would work, and the people involved seemed to think it would work.
Simply removing obviously sick passengers and crew, by itself, should get rid of the illness, if the virus spreads primarily through obviously sick individuals. In fact, getting rid of the passenger who was the carrier (but not obviously sick) after two days on the ship, by itself, should have removed most of the risk, if it is obviously sick individuals who spread the illness.
We are now figuring out that it is a lot more than obviously sick individuals that spread the disease. The virus lingers a long time on hard surfaces. Crew and passengers can both spread the virus, without being obviously sick. The virus seems to spread in many ways, including through the air.
The only way of reducing the risk is “geographical separation,” such as keeping cruise ship passengers away from Japan. This temporarily reduces the risk that Japanese citizens will catch the virus. It may even increase the risk that those in the isolated group catch the illness from each other. In China, I am sure that the taxi drivers, the pizza delivery people, and the grocery store keepers included quite a few people who were carriers for the virus. People who used these services, suddenly had a problem.
At this point, I don’t think that any quarantine guidelines have actually been developed that work for this illness. Walk around in fancy suits, with goggles and P95 masks, 24/7/365, perhaps. Or stay 50 meters away from other people, and don’t touch anything that anyone else might have touched. Without guidelines that actually work, the quarantine system doesn’t work well at all.
I made an experiment today of going shopping but keeping in mind contagion risks..
Exhausting, and time and time again one came up against exposure situations from people and surfaces, on hands, on clothes. I used lots of streets where I knew I would not meet many people, etc.
I had no mask, but gloves and anti-bac wipes in a freezer bag in a pocket keeping them moist. What I bought has been dumped in a room where it will be untouched for several weeks if it cannot be washed in chlorine.
Frankly, one has to go self-isolated to limit exposure to any useful extent, and stay sane – this will go through us like a hot knife through butter.
Life is not a clinically-safe set-up, and can’t be made so.
This is very responsible behavior. We are responsible with our sex and prophylactics why is their a stigma against responsible behavior in a pandemic.
Way to go, Xabier! Germophobia saved my life!
But bear in mind, we can take these things too far. Take the case of Howard Hughes.
Toward the end of his life, he lay naked in bed in darkened hotel rooms in what he considered a germ-free zone. He wore tissue boxes on his feet to protect them. And he burned his clothing if someone near him became ill.
The phobia grew so severe that it might have contributed to Hughes’s increasing addiction to codeine and his reclusiveness in the two decades before his death from heart failure in 1976. Nearly two years after his death, Hughes’s estate attorney called on former APA CEO Raymond D. Fowler, PhD, to conduct a psychological autopsy to determine Hughes’s mental and emotional condition in his last years and to help understand the origins of his mental disorder. ….
That research led Fowler to believe that Hughes’s fear for his health most likely emerged from his childhood. Hughes’s mother was constantly worried about her son’s exposure to germs, terrified that he would catch polio, a major health threat at the time. His mother checked him every day for diseases and was cautious about what he ate.
In adolescence, Hughes was paralyzed for several months and unable to walk. After a few months, the symptoms disappeared. Fowler believes Hughes’s paralysis–for which no physical basis was found–was psychologically based and an early manifestation of his lifelong pattern of withdrawing in times of stress.
Hughes’s fear of germs grew throughout his life, and he concurrently developed obsessive-compulsive symptoms around efforts to protect himself from germs, Fowler notes. For example, he wrote a staff manual on how to open a can of peaches–including directions for removing the label, scrubbing the can down until it was bare metal, washing it again and pouring the contents into a bowl without touching the can to the bowl.
Ironically, Hughes ended up neglecting his own hygiene later in his life, rarely bathing or brushing his teeth. He even forced his compulsions on those around him, ordering staff to wash their hands multiple times and layer their hands with paper towels when serving his food.
“He didn’t believe germs could come from him, just from the outside,” Fowler explains. “He was convinced that he was going to be contaminated from the outside.”
https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug05/hughes
I may not have the money of a mad billionaire, but I can certainly cultivate the habits!
I’ve been posting from a darkened isolated room, with boxes on my feet and naked all this time, actually…..:)
I sometimes wonder whether the people making quarantine recommendations come from a similar view of the importance of germs.
By the way, my mother had a master’s degree in Medical Technology that she got back in the 1940s. She was very aware of germs. Some people thought she was a nut for cleanliness. Her sister reported that she once had a dream in which my mother rolled up the linoleum in the kitchen, to clean under it. She didn’t do that, but she did wash the kitchen floor several times a week. Each family member had a separate towel, which she washed very frequently. She also ironed each towel. My father was a General Practice Medical Doctor.
In a way, the situation is like, “If your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail.” A focus on bacteria and what they can do can lead to overlooking other issues that are important as well. We now know that our bodies need certain beneficial bacteria, for example. Spraying disinfectant everywhere is not necessarily the best idea.
Guilty as charged. I’m over invested in the cleanliness route. My only tool is aesthetics, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Lets’ say we don’t sterilize every surface everywhere that the public are likely to touch. But instead nudge the culture in a direction of aesthetic management. Pretend that every mall is Buckingham Palace, and must be visually perfect. Aesthetics are hyper complex, so such a treatment would put lots of cleaners to work, but might lead to a degree of economic benefit too. It would work on the public mind. And it would probably remove enough germs to protect (minimally, and in a complex way) against the virus too.
It takes some pretty rigorous training to keep discipline in personal protective equipment in these situations. The sooner we identify proper PPE procedures train personel the sooner our brave health workers can provide aid. This should be happening NOW!
ALL OUR HEALTH WORKERS SHOULD BE WEARING SUBMICRON MASKS NOW!
The thing was I had worked out all kinds of procedures before going into town; but then things happened that I hadn’t thought about -you simply touch or brush against so much.
‘Damn, my backpack straps and toggles are possibly contaminated, and now my coat zipper,and now the top of my hat which I’ve pressed down on my head because the wind was blowing it off….’ and so on.
Really, it’s almost impossible and exhausting. You need a buddy to watch you and tell you when you have done something unsafe.
Best to trust in Allah and realise that the camel is probably going to get loose….
Filters – not even ceramic filters are effective against virus. That said they might remove some spitle particles from the air from coughs and sneezes. However, COVID-19 seems to be a contact virus with long lived surface endurance. Wash your hands frequently with detergent soap and keep them away from all mucus membranes. The best prevention is not to be anywhere near the infected. Makes being a medical profressional really dangerous.
Xabier, the “blind camel” is a metaphor for Destiny, is it not? But was not that a conceit of Ibn Rushd, in his refutation of al Ghazali? His point, I think, being that destiny operates independently of the Divine Will.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
highlights:
India only 3 cases and all have recovered… it’s hard to believe that there won’t be a burst there very soon…
Iran 43 cases and 8 deaths so there must be many more cases not yet reported…
Singapore 89 cases… holding at 89 cases? have they succeeded? for now?
Italy up 78 cases to 157… that’s double…
South Korea 763 cases… plus 327 in about one day…
Japan 146 cases, up by 12… kind of quietly increasing… quiet compared to the bursts in other countries…
China DEATHS plus 989 up to 3,431… about 40% higher in one day…
they just corrected China deaths to +150 for a total of 2,592…
nothing to see here… please move along…
A bit chewy–
TWiV 588: Coronavirus update – Save the pangolin!
http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
Virologist giving a report.
I listened to a bit of this. Lots of irrelevant banter at the beginning. I got to the part where one of the panelists (at least) was impressed by the drop in new reported cases from China.
Let me know if the panel actually has useful insights in this new tape. It seemed like the effort of listening was too high, relative to what I might get out of it.
If you are not virus literate, it is very chewy, plus dense and long.
If you continue, good info, but virus literacy is needed.
But agree, cumbersome for most.
I notice the number of cases in Thailand has stayed on 35 for a week. May be true, but given the lengths they will go to to protect their tourism industry, I am highly suspicious.
All 3 confirmed cases in India have been from my home state of Kerala in the South West. Students studying in Wuhan. The first to be confirmed and subsequently recovered is a girl studying medicine. No further reports of any confirmed cases here or from other states. Surprising, but good news so far.
I am guessing that there are other cases in India. Have there been any Chinese workers coming to India, perhaps to install solar panels or some other relatively high tech item? Or business people negotiating contracts for purchases of Chinese products?
Getting confirmed cases is difficult. It is necessary for people to first suspect the cause. Then it is necessary to actually have the expensive test kit available to test for the coronavirus. The third obstacle is the high false-negative test rate. The disease could easily be around for a well over a month before anyone figures out the problem.
Nice! Maybe India can be hit less hard if they prepare now.
I wouldn’t count on it.
One thing I am certain of – the statistics are way off. Orders of magnitude off. Just wait until hospitals in the infected areas are overwhelmed then no one will have any clue of the numbers just guesses after that point. The numbers in China are at best conservative guesses…at worst…outright fabrication. In one instance a hospital reported 50 deaths in one day and the Chinese statistics showed that same hospital with 1 death. It is just plain lying. And I am sure this is not an isolated case.
Well let us just hope that the rate of increase of new cases in china is falling as reported. Without growth in new cases covid 19 is just another bug to be squashed.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Get this! The official death number for today in China went up a whopping 989. More than twice as much as their official new cases number. No explanation so far for the dramatic one day increase.
yes, I also saw that, but now they have “corrected” it to +150…
That’s interesting and a relief, but also the most I’ve seen on that site for one day.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/us-futures-coronavirus-outbreak.html
“Dow set to drop more than 400 points at the open as coronavirus cases outside China surge”…
perhaps it never will hit 30,000…
The Dow “stumbled 900 points at the open” but is down a little less than 800 points now.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/coronavirus-live-updates-china-south-korea-cases.html
“South Korea’s government raised the COVID-19 alert to its highest level after a recent implosion of confirmed infection cases, which took the country’s tally from 31 on Feb. 18 to 763 on Monday morning.”
“implosion” is the wrong word…
once upon a time, Hubei had only 31 cases…
Finally starting to get accurate numbers. Look here and at Italy to see whats coming soon to a neighborhood near you.
Next..coming to a Supermarket near YOUl
Grocery Store Shelves Emptied in Milan During Coronavirus Quarantine
StoryfulFebruary 23, 2020, 3:10 PM EST
Residents stockpiled grocercies ahead of a government-imposed quarantine to contain the spread of Covid-19, or the coronavirus, Euro News reported.
Over 150 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and three deaths have been recorded in Italy as the country stepped up efforts to contain the spread, local media reported.
Italy has imposed strict quarantine restrictions in two northern regions close to Milan and Venice.
Angelo Borrelli, the head of the country’s civil protection service, said on February 23 that “patient zero” had not yet been identified. He said the Italian army was making emergency beds available and 500 police officers were being deployed to guard quarantined areas.
In this video, rows of empty grocery store shelves in Milan can be seen on February 23. Credit: @barny_milano via Storyful
https://news.yahoo.com/grocery-store-shelves-emptied-milan-201017237.html
If this but hits South Florida, which I think probably is already here, forget about it!
If this strikes and a massive hurricane follows it….this place will be a ghost of town…
No tourists and a bunch of diverse people …what possibly can go wrong?
I am thinking of the villages, more than 100,000 people, almost all of them over 55, constant large groups doing drumming, gathering in squares, dancing. I guess there are worse ways to go.
My guess is the economic effects will be far more devastating to life than the virus itself, if we lose the support structure no matter how many cans of beans, unless of course it truly is beans all the way down, sooner or later they run out. There will be enough people to work, it is the loss of pieces of the chain that will cause everything to stop. Loss or critical people which take time to train will be a great problem.
Interesting how much time we spend focusing on the virus(yes, I did that initially) and so little time focusing on what comes next. If the economy falls apart, it is going to be tough in ways we do not understand or foresee.
One can sell the stock market to get Federal Reserve Notes which are an obligation by an entity that is running a trillion dollar per year deficit. I think you only get to spend precious metals once, after that you have a bulls-eye on your back.
A guess for the individual, the closer one is to primary economics as opposed to tertiary economics and the more skilled one is at that position the better the survival rate. I suspect derivatives are a means to hide reality and take a skim not add value.
Dennis L.
Very insightful post, thanks.
Very true: I was running over the possible economic ramifications this morning over coffee – horrifying.
Like the German army at the end of WW2: they still had magnificent tanks, but ran out of ammunition and fuel rendering them nothing more than useless heaps of scrap metal. It could be same story with our agricultural machinery, etc.
Still, no reason not to get those beans in. Jump ahead too many stages ahead and one will lose hope and fail t act appropriately on today’s task.
OMG! G20 conference … globalization comes under fire….
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/globalization-comes-under-fire-amid-223948175.html
As finance ministers and central bank governors kicked off their Group of 20 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Saturday, representatives from the world’s second-largest economy, China, were notably absent. Chinese authorities are instead focusing on containing an outbreak that’s so far killed more than 2,300 people, infected nearly 80,000, disrupted global supply chains and led to downgrades in global growth forecasts.
How far the virus will spread and how deep its economic impact will be remain unknown. But already in the Saudi capital, questions were being raised about the downsides to the dependencies that globalization brings.
“Do we want to still depend at the level of 90% or 95% on the supply chain of China for the automobile industry, for the drug industry, for the aeronautical industry, or do we draw the consequences of that situation to build new factories, new productions, and to be more independent and sovereign?” France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire asked on Saturday. “That’s not protectionism, that’s just the necessity of being sovereign and independent from an industrial point of view.”
The disruption comes at a fraught time for economic policy makers, who are struggling to find new ways to boost growth when many of them are already operating with record-low interest rates, limiting their ability to provide stimulus through monetary policy. Attention is now is turning to fiscal policy, with more than half of the G-20 economies easing budgets to allow more spending.
The coronavirus outbreak “is a stress test for the world and China,” Douglas Flint, chairman of Standard Life Aberdeen, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Riyadh. “We are going to see more fiscal stimulus.”
Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said he’d be advocating for that to happen.
“To overcome downside risks we are facing together, I told the G-20 that I expect nations with big fiscal space will make a bold policy decision,” he said. “It’s becoming clear that the virus spread is a risk that could inflict a severe impact on the global economy.”…
The coronavirus outbreak also makes it more likely the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development will cut its economic forecasts next month, Jose Angel Gurria, the organization’s secretary-general, said in an interview in Riyadh.
“Look at what is going on: already we are in a slowdown, already we have the trade tensions, already investment was suffering, and now we have the coronavirus,” Gurria said.
Still, adding fiscal firepower may not be the solution to the supply difficulties that virus has created for the global economy. Even if governments fueled demand via spending, it wouldn’t address the issue of factory shutdowns in China.
“How do you substitute a global value chain?” Gurria asked. “If you have a supplier that is limited at this stage, that cannot export, how do you organize so the global balance sheet doesn’t stop? That is quite crucial.
Yada. Yada Yada…..
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OjYoNL4g5Vg
“Do we want to still depend at the level of 90% or 95% on the supply chain of China for the automobile industry, for the drug industry, for the aeronautical industry, or do we draw the consequences of that situation to build new factories, new productions, and to be more independent and sovereign?”
Or do we wait 2-3 months to find out if we’re in the same boat with manuf. anywhere else being in the same situation?
Two to three months doesn’t give us much time to do anything, I am afraid.
Exactly, it’s the kind of advance notice that doesn’t really help: what can one do with such a complex system in so short a time-frame?
The WSJ, in its online version, is showing as its top story, World Economy Shudders as Coronavirus Threatens Global Supply Chains
Manufacturers’ increased reliance on more interconnected China sees shortages ripple around the globe
supply chain problems could infect 50+% of the world population before the virus does…
Good point!
So more “fiscal firepower” may not keep the supply chains open. A blinding glimpse of the obvious. How much helicopter money would have kept the Mary Celeste on course? How much will get a container ship to sail when the carefully trained and well disciplined crew are all in intensive care? Dear parasite, please infect the world’s economists and bankers.
Interesting, given the open knowledge-understanding that the current French gov is a mere branch of the Rothschild house, does this proclamation of finmin imply that at least one of the factions owning the global CB cartel is now openly discussing aborting (deleveraging) of globalization?
Pingback: 2020/02/23 – Robert Morningstar – Is China’s Spiraling “Coronavirus” Epidemic, in fact, an Escaped Bio-Weapon!?: and mystery guest – The Other Side of Midnight
China’s Xi says epidemic ‘grim,’ calls for action on economy
JOE McDONALD
Associated PressFebruary 23, 2020, 10:55 AM EST
BEIJING (AP) — Warning that China’s virus epidemic is “still grim and complex,” President Xi Jinping called Sunday for more efforts to stop the outbreak, revive industry and prevent the disease from disrupting spring planting of crops.
Xi defended the ruling Communist Party’s response as “timely and effective” in a video conference with officials in charge of anti-disease work, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Xi sounded a note of caution in the face of hopes abroad that the disease that has killed more than 2,400 people since December might be under control. He said the situation is at a “critical stage” and called on officials to “resolutely curb the spread of the epidemic.”
“The current epidemic situation is still grim and complex,” Xinhua cited Xi as saying. “Prevention and control are at the most critical stage.”
The ruling party is trying to strike a difficult balance between stopping the virus and reviving China’s vast manufacturing and other industries. Most of the world’s second-largest economy has been shut down since late January in the most sweeping anti-disease measures ever imposed and are only gradually reopening.
Forecasters say China might rebound quickly if the outbreak can be controlled by the end of March. But they say this quarter’s economic output will shrink by as much as 1% from the quarter ending in December after Beijing extended the Lunar New Year holiday to keep factories and offices closed and told the public to avoid traveling.
Concern is growing that the disease might be spreading in South Korea and other countries, instead of only affecting people who visited China and others who had close contact with them.
Xi said the epidemic is a health emergency with the “fastest spread” and “most difficult prevention and control” in China since the Communist Party came to power in 1949, according to Xinhua.
“For us, this is a crisis and a big test,” Xi was cited as saying.
https://news.yahoo.com/chinas-xi-says-epidemic-grim-151814311.html
Well, at least Xi is somewhat admitting the problem and figuring out that crop planting must go on. Also, other industry, at least outside of hardest hit areas. But virus may very well get to other areas in the next couple of weeks.
Candour like that from Xi is perhaps more worrying than anything else.
Vital parts for agricultural machinery are the question. But who in cities ever thinks that the crops might not get sown? It’s all just magic….
It truly must be bad for Xi to be talking this way. I think the people in China are a little closer to the land than people in the US are. Often, they lived on farms as children or before they became migrant workers.
What a revelation with XI coming clean with the sheen. The Chinese govt. usually so carefully scripting their message, but now the situation is apparently so grave he is being openly honest. That’s good and quite alarming.
Im sorry. Ive seen farmers 13 year olds put up a pole barn. I ve seen a shop design and install turbochargers on farm diesal engines that wernt designed for them and have them work so well people from 3 states were using them. With not one degree in the shop. Farmers have these funny things called machine shops with these funny things called mills and lathes. Farmers get their job done with blood sweat and tears and a whole lot of smarts. Then they build hotrods and all sorts of technical s*** in the winter- FOR FUN. What they do need is fuel and electricity. Besides that they will take care of the rest in their sleep. No they cant mill up semiconductors besides that they will get it done- without even breaking a sweat. THEY WILL FIGURE A WAY. Its what they do.
https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-it-will-probably-go-pandemic-and-we-should-all-prepare-now/
Here is a link to an article written by the expert risk communication team Dr. Jody Lanard and Dr. Peter M. Sandman just released on the blog Virology Down Under. The blog is run by Australian virologist Dr. Ian Mackay. The article covers many of the issues with nCovid being discussed here and has lots of good ideas and information.
That is a very good article, in my opinion. I am sure, as we know more, it might be refined a bit, but it definitely goes in the right direction, especially when it talks about planning for the virus to come everywhere, because it is becoming more and more clear that we cannot “contain” the virus. Things like having more of current prescription medications on hand and cross training some workers if others are out sick. These things make sense to me.
He also talks about things that sound to me like trying not to get the virus, if it is in the area. Things like cancelling big group activities, for a some time period. He talks about practicing not touching faces and using elbow bumps instead of handshakes.
I am wondering how much of difference each of these changes will make. If people are getting on busses and trains every day, they will be sharing viruses through the air. Maybe the virus can be slowed down for a few days, so that it is a bit more possible to provide medical care for all who need it. But if there are only 1% as many intensive care beds as are needed, and practically no drugs, then a few days or a months difference won’t make much difference.
It ought to be doable to make more beds using same-size cardboard boxes. You turn them upside down and “saran”-wrap them. Then they can be flattened and assembled somewhere else if needed. In somer ways, easier than the current system, and just about cost free. BTW, could paper-bag-adapted masks function in any way like commercial masks?
I am not an epidemiologist, I am not a virologist, I was a practicing dentist for 41 years and my knowledge is limited to hepatitis virus for the most part.
The OOO Journal published an article in the seventies regarding OS getting hep B comparing use of gloves and non use. The chance of infection was time related and independent of use of gloves – gloves develop holes with use. It was customary to double glove on some cases, steady use is a good way to ruin one’s hands with carpal tunnel. The vaccine finally conquered hep B and I was one of the early adapters. In my last years hep C and hep A were an issue, not sure where vaccines are there but with hep C when we knew we had a case we double gloved, wore face shields, masks, and wrap around safety glasses being very careful to dispose of everything and not touching the underlying clothing. That is tougher than it looks.
As a healthcare worker, the longer one is around the corona virus the more certain infection becomes. In our clinic we were fortunate to have a staff that valued each other as people, we were careful not only for ourselves, but each other and we followed the rules, I had no empathy for opinions the slightest bit different than protocol. Sharps are a nightmare, everyone must be focused. With corona every patient is like this, there are more patients than staff, it has to be exhausting, sooner or later you make a mistake.
I do not get flu shots, my feeling is to let the body fight it out and either the bug or the body wins, so far the body has held its own. I am pretty much resolved to handle this virus the same way, I am older and have arranged my affairs. If I run, the next time it comes around I am even older, time to tell the immune system to “Suck it up buttercup,” and let life run its
course.
Dennis L.
I have noticed how disciplined the dentists and dental assistants are at the hospital I visit regularly in my town. They are young, professional, well-disciplined and follow the safety protocols scrupulously. Your post makes it clear why they are wise to do this. They are on the frontline every day, and mistakes that allow infection to spread can be devastating to them and to their patients.
Modern medicine uses tons and tons of disposable plastic waste, so ya, good for us humans, not good for the planet. Lets see infection control measures after China can’t send us our stuff. Surgery with no gloves, no drapes, no antibiotics, back to civil war scenes. It will happen now or when we run out of fossil fuels. Nurse, hand me that bottle of Jack, on swig for me, one for the patient, and one to disinfect the wound.
Hm, hot water, stainless steel, vodka sterilization, properly washed blankets etc..
Voila you are still enjoying xy% of decreased mortality in comparison previous ages.
In other words, good enough vs present time.
As Nature wrote in 2015:
“The findings reinforce suspicions that bat coronaviruses capable of directly infecting humans (rather than first needing to evolve in an intermediate animal host) may be more common than previously thought, the researchers say.
But other virologists question whether the information gleaned from the experiment justifies the potential risk. Although the extent of any risk is difficult to assess, Simon Wain-Hobson, a virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, points out that the researchers have created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells. “If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,” he says. ”
This is excerpted from the ZeroHedge article referenced above. The metaphor might be, “It’s not nice to fool mother nature.”
What a mess.
Dennis L.
That is a very disturbing paragraph.
If it is really true that Wuhan was really allowing experiments with 600 bats, right in the middle of a city of at least 11 million people, someone was using very poor judgment. It is way too easy for some worker to accidentally get infected and transmit the virus to the rest of the world.
“If it is really true that Wuhan was really allowing experiments with 600 bats, right in the middle of a city of at least 11 million people, someone was using very poor judgment.”
Yeah, the lab should have been a few hundred feet under an unpopulated part of the Gobi Desert. Interesting that if it was indeed created in a lab by scientists, like many of us suspect, it getting out fits with a scientific principle; The Law of Unintended Consequences.
I think that the Zerohedge article you lined to earlier is key to understanding the likely unintended escape of the virus. It can be found here:
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/chinese-scientists-find-coronavirus-did-not-originate-wuhan-seafood-market
The Nature article from which the excerpted above is found here:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
There is also a link to an article from an official Chinese newspaper, practically admitting to a problem.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1180429.shtml
There is also a link to the academic article quoted in the Zerohedge article.
“There is also a link to an article from an official Chinese newspaper, practically admitting to a problem.”
I think that seals it, because they wouldn’t do that unless they were allowed and directed to.
“But other virologists question whether the information gleaned from the experiment justifies the potential risk.”
But the information will be of direct benefit to the experimenters (publications! research grants! fame!), whereas the risk will be borne by everyone else. So of course the experiment will continue; it is a classic example o risk transference.
Yes, Dennis, indeed a fine mess.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/23/europe/italy-novel-coronavirus-spike-intl/index.html
This is an article from today; Coronavirus cases soar in Italy as authorities scramble to find patient zero
“Italy’s confirmed cases surged from three on Friday morning to more than 130 by Sunday morning.
The majority of coronavirus infections are concentrated in mainland China (with more than 78,800 cases), followed by Japan (738) and South Korea (602). Italy’s spike now marks the biggest outbreak outside of Asia.”
“We are asking basically that everyone who has come from areas stricken by the epidemic to remain under a mandatory house stay,” Speranza said at a Saturday press conference.”
In Italy from 3 Friday to 130 this morning, Sunday. Going like wildfire. One problem with Italy is in Rome, Florence and Venice the millions of tourists that pass through them each year are two fold. One, if he virus takes hold how can the spread of it be stopped with so many tourists. Thousands of people wait in line for St. Peters Basilica, the Vatican Museum, Borghese Gallery, the Colloseum, Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Victor Emanuel Monument, Medici Treasure, Uffizi Gallery, Ponte Vechio, The Duomo, museum Acadamia, Boboli Gardens, Bargello, Pitti Palace, St. Marks Square, Rialto Bridge, Doge’s Palace, St. Marks Basilica, Correr Museum and travel on the Grand Canal in Venice via Vaparetto’s.
Take away the tourist influx of money from Italy and since it’s already having economic trouble, it will surely falter, which could be a harbinger for the rest of Europe.
Nice call, this is the first time I have seen an explanation of why Italy; what an awful problem. Stop accepting tourists and the economy collapses, Venice mostly lives on tourism.
There are so many facets of this problem, the virus causes issues in so many of our systems, manufacturing, tourism, health care, education.
Mankind at one point went through a bottleneck of several thousands of mating pairs, would something like this been perhaps a cause?
We know how to model epidemics, epidemics that burn out, but what if this one does not burn out, it will spread ever slower once over 50%, but it will still spread until herd immunity is reached, the question is then what size the herd?
If one hides until herd immunity has been reached and the virus is endemic, that does not help as at that point, you are it.
Dennis L.
“If one hides until herd immunity has been reached and the virus is endemic, that does not help as at that point, you are it.”
Good point. Might as well take your punishment with everyone else, hope to build some immunity and make it through the bottleneck. There have been other close calls with viruses, flus, etc., but this one is more likely becoming a pandemic because it has such a long incubation period and is so easily transmitted. This is the one people worried could come along and cause havoc as all strategies so far have failed. Essentially the only strategy is to ask people not to go outside and hope the virus dies out, but it’s slowing in some places like Wuhan supposedly, but proliferating in many other places around the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QePvLSBFZPU
Got to see this one, Dennis, because at 5:30 in the video, a German Dr. who seems quite shaken says they have an example of a 70 year old man that incubated the virus for 27 days! Also, he says the number of cases in Iran must be much higher based on number of deaths.
What happens is that the virus is likely to evolve, and come back in another year or two.
Immunity may or may not do any good. In fact, it might make it worse, based on some information Chris Martenson shared in a recent video. If immunity has reduced over time and the virus has mutated a bit, the person make get the new illness harder that he did the first time the virus came around. Dengue Fever is an example of a virus that behaves this way.
which might apply to the 1890 flu epidemic—(killed 1 million), then the 1918 epidemic–killed 50 m
“If immunity has reduced over time and the virus has mutated a bit, the person make get the new illness harder that he did the first time the virus came around.”
Ok, so avoidance is likely a better strategy, but for how long can that be done? Even in Wuhan one family member is allowed to go out to get groceries every other day. And people are wearing masks that are not sealed on the edges, so it seems likely that if the virus becomes a pandemic, as it appears to be in the process of, most people sooner or later will get exposed to it.
As the virus spreads around the world more areas are going into shutdown mode, but that puts the brakes on the world economy and eventually it won’t work, unless caution is reduced enough for people to go about the business of BAU again.
We’ve all seen how the CB’s around the world have been doing all sorts of strategies to keep the world economy chugging along, so with this virus surely that complicates that situation to the extreme of what is possible, right?
Yes, avoidance strategy for the win.
The best case to emulate is probably that kind of avoidance exercised by count Dracula, apart from his secluded estates, reportedly he had no entourage or employees, all doing by himself (butler, servant, cook, driving the horse carriage etc).
Nowadays, the problem is being as good as count Dracula.
The Dr John Cambell videos gave examples of this in laymans terms. The antibodies are effective against the first virus strain. The mutated virus strain is recognized antibodies are produced but they dont kill the mutated virus and but they latch on to them and provide a entry path for the virus.
This would explain the second time around the heart gets attacked cases.
In terms of behavior this is a sticky wicket. The bold plan of just going about daily business with not isolating and the hope of developing immunity no longer has the hope of immunity. You and your significant other isolate best you can? FOREVER?
Some one tell me the good plan because those both suck.
Right! Economies need all kinds of businesses, including tourism. Closing off tourists doesn’t work.
Iran is having the same problem. The place the virus seemed to especially spread in the holy city of Qom. According to Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-iran-13/iran-says-coronavirus-has-spread-to-several-cities-reports-two-new-deaths-idUSKBN20F1GU
“It’s possible that it exists in all cities in Iran,” she said.
It seems like the virus is spreading in bursts, for a lack of a better way to put it, as the number of cases in SK, Italy and Iran have suddenly jumped quite fast in certain pockets. And to already be all over Iran is really shocking.
It’s may seem to be in bursts and is happening faster then past events, but we, today, look at this daily, and sometime hourly.
When we look at past events it’s broken down into months and years, the spanish flu lasted for about 35 months and we’re barely 35 days into this one (from it becoming public)
bursts and pockets are absolutely what we are seeing…
“bursts” of course will be more intense than ever because of highest population ever and most air travel ever…
“pockets” because of course all it takes is one infected but asymptomatic traveler to infect some locals…
from a health standpoint, most of us are very safe from the virus unless close to a pocket… I bet getting hit by a car or lightning is a better chance if a person is far from a pocket…
but from an economic standpoint, by Summer it will probably not matter how close we are to pockets, since the effects of supply chain disruptions will reach equally to the healthy and unhealthy…
The thing I see wrong with this theory is the location were the virus seems to have started spreading. It is described as the “economic heartland” of Italy, far from the coast.
https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2020/02/area-of-italy-where-cases-found-guardian.png
I found this chart in a Guardian article linked in another post. I can’t imagine many tourists to a small, inland town in Italy.
I wonder if the virus could hitchhike to a country via products from China…
no… that is totally reediculous…