COVID-19 notes
COVID-19 information and resources for Johns Hopkins
University: Coronavirus
Research Publications & Resources.
A non-scientist’s view:
An Optimist’s
Case for COVID-19 Lockdown, Our Safest and Quickest Path Back to Normalcy.
Scientists’ views:
Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand. Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. PDF.
: Illustration of adaptive triggering of suppression strategies in GB,
for R0=2.2, a policy of all four interventions considered, an “on” trigger of
100 ICU cases in a week and an “off” trigger of 50 ICU cases.
i.e. impose more extreme social distancing measures every time admissions
to intensive care units (ICUs) start to spike, and relax them each time
admissions fall.
MIT Tech Review: We’re not going
back to normal
Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will
upend our way of life, in some ways forever.
Re: graph above:
Under this model, the researchers conclude, social distancing and school
closures would need to be in force some two-thirds of the time—roughly two
months on and one month off—until a vaccine is available, which will take at
least 18 months (if it works at all).
…
Eighteen months!? Surely there must be other solutions. Why not just
build more ICUs and treat more people at once, for example?
Well, in the researchers’ model, that didn’t solve the problem. Without
social distancing of the whole population, they found, even the best mitigation
strategy—which means isolation or quarantine of the sick, the old, and those
who have been exposed, plus school closures—would still lead to a surge of
critically ill people eight times bigger than the US or UK system can cope
with.
MIT Tech Review: A coronavirus
vaccine will take at least 18 months—if it works at all.
… Per person, the transmission rate of undocumented infections was 55% of
documented infections ([46%–62%]), yet, due to their greater numbers,
undocumented infections were the infection source for 79% of documented cases.
These findings explain the rapid geographic spread of SARS-CoV2 and indicate
containment of this virus will be particularly challenging.
US hospital uses
five months' worth of supplies in six days as shortages hit.
Coronavirus
spreads quickly and sometimes before people have symptoms, study finds.
COVID-19: Why America May Be Hit Hard for 3-4 Months
& What To Do. Dr. Carl Juneau
How to treat
Coronavirus infection COVID-19.
Interview with the member of the Russian Academy of Science Alexander
Chuchalin
Q: That is, the primary symptom is a cough…
A: No, the first is a runny nose, and a sore throat.
Q: They say that there is no runny nose.
A: No, these are big data issues. 74 thousand medical records were
processed, and all of them have rhinorrhea (runny nose. – RT). When you are
told this — there are really some nuances. Biology is like this. The biological
target of the virus is epithelial cells. The nose, oropharyngeal region,
trachea, and then small bronchioles, targeting these regions are especially
dangerous to humans. And it turned out that, having this mechanism, the virus
leads to a sharp breakdown of the immune system.
We are still behind the curve:
How Bad Is
Coronavirus Going To Be And What Should We Do?
… None of this is particularly hard to think up, it’s just a question of
doing it. The problem is that it reveals that a lot of our economic
relationships are basically bullshit (something the Great depression and WWII
generations learned, which we’ve forgotten.) They are social fictions, perhaps
useful, perhaps not, which can be put aside when necessary.
Coronavirus case trajectories by country – update.
Coronavirus deaths by country update.
In the absence
of a vaccine, we need to practice social distancing.
Months of school
closures, social distancing needed to fight pandemic: U of T research
NEW DATA: 60% of confirmed #coronavirus cases in Denmark are in their 40s, 30s,
20s or younger.
Why we’re not
overreacting to the coronavirus, in one chart
Italy tried to stem its outbreak, belatedly. We’re on the same course.
Chen Shen, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam, Review of
Ferguson et al "Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions..."
Neil Ferguson and an Imperial College team perform detailed
simulations of outbreak response. This
is an important work because they model social/government response, not just
contagion. They show suppression (lockdown so that R0 < 1) is essential because
mitigation (R0 > 1, “flattening the curve”) necessarily results in massive
overload of hospitals and many dead. This is an important conclusion that
should inform policy makers. However, they make structural mistakes in
analyzing outbreak response. They ignore standard Contact Tracing, allowing
isolation of infected prior to symptoms. They also ignore door-to-door
monitoring to identify cases with symptoms. Their conclusions that there will
be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown almost all
infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to
symptoms and cannot infect others. The outbreak can be stopped completely with
no resurgence as in China
Coronavirus: The
Hammer and the Dance
What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time
Here’s what we’re going to cover today, again with lots of charts, data
and models with plenty of sources:
· What’s the current
situation?
· What options do we have?
· What’s the one thing that
matters now: Time
· What does a good coronavirus
strategy look like?
· How should we think about
the economic and social impacts?
When you’re done reading the article, this is what you’ll take away:
· Our healthcare system is already
collapsing.
· Countries have two options:
either they fight it hard now, or they will suffer a massive epidemic.
· If they choose the epidemic,
hundreds of thousands will die. In some countries, millions.
· And that might not even
eliminate further waves of infections.
· If we fight hard now, we
will curb the deaths.
· We will relieve our
healthcare system.
· We will prepare better.
· We will learn.
· The world has never learned
as fast about anything, ever.
· And we need it, because we
know so little about this virus.
· All of this will achieve
something critical: Buy Us Time.
· If we choose to fight hard,
the fight will be sudden, then gradual.
· We will be locked in for
weeks, not months.
· Then, we will get more and
more freedoms back.
· It might not be back to
normal immediately.
· But it will be close, and
eventually back to normal.
· And we can do all that while
considering the rest of the economy too.
Ok, let’s do this….
Interrupting
transmission of COVID-19: lessons from containment efforts in Singapore.
Trump Deploys
Navy Floating Hospital To NYC Harbor As Virus Cases Soar.
The Pentagon confirmed to CNN that the ships would provide 2,000
additional hospital beds to the city's capacity. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
said Wednesday that 50,000 extra hospital beds are needed.
(fwiw, I have a feeling that as bad as the financial markets feel now,
they will feel even worse once the virus truly hits home on Wall Street when
ERs and ICUs are over-run in NYC)
How Global
Agriculture Grew a Pandemic.
We are all inundated with news about the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing
is glaringly missing from the coverage: the underlying structural reasons for
why this is happening. Yes, in our globalized economy, travel has increased
exponentially in the past 20 years, not just for pleasure, but also for profit.
Still, that alone does not explain why we’ve had a litany of infectious disease
outbreaks over the same period, each one coming hot on the heels of the last
and doing nothing to alter our public health response. What does? Evolutionary
biologist Rob Wallace, of the Institute for Global Studies at the University of
Minnesota, has some answers. For the past 25 years, he’s been studying the
evolution and spread of influenzas and other pathogens. His research shows that
if you really want to understand the nature of global outbreaks, you have to
look at global agriculture.
Nativism and
xenophobia hides the real origin of the coronavirus — which is political and
global.
Everyone is focused on trying to contain corona — and naturally this is
the right thing to do. But there is a deeper problem here. This is not a
singular event. Diseases like this (and possibly worse) will keep popping up
with greater and greater frequency, unless we radically change our
hyper-industrialization food production to something that respects the limits
of our “natural” world.
Canada’s
COVID-19 Economic Response Plan: Support for Canadians and Businesses.
On March 18, 2020, the Prime
Minister announced a new set of economic measures to help stabilize the economy
during this challenging period. These measures, delivered as part of the
Government of Canada’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan, will provide up to $27
billion in direct support to Canadian workers and businesses.
Income Support for Individuals Who Need it Most
Mortgage Default Management Tools
Role of Financial Institutions
Supporting Canadian Businesses Through the Canada Account
Helping Businesses Keep Their Workers
Flexibility for Businesses Filing Taxes
Coronavirus vaccines: five key questions as trials
begin
Some experts warn that accelerated testing will involve some risky
trade-offs
‘Deep cleaning’
doesn’t mean anything. Still, deep cleaners are in high demand.
Good news for a change:
A made-in-Canada
solution to the coronavirus outbreak?
The best hope for an antiviral drug may come from Michel Chrétien's
Montreal lab
Regular Related
Fare
Amazon's Supply
Chain Is Breaking and Small Businesses Are Screwed.
Restaurant
industry estimates $225B in losses from coronavirus. And of 5 to 7 million jobs.
The full economic impact, according to the association, will be $675
billion because every dollar spent in restaurants generates an additional $2
elsewhere in the economy.
This Is How the
Coronavirus Will Destroy the Economy.
The Very Real
Prospect Of $5 Oil.
JPM Cuts Q2 GDP
To -14%: "The Lamps Are Going Out All Across The Economy”
JPMorgan has slashed its forecast for real annualized GDP growth in Q1 to
-4.0%, followed by an even weaker -14.0% in Q2, far, far worse than Goldman's
-5%. However, just like Goldman, JPM too sees a V-shaped recovery in Q3, when
it expects the economy to recover to 8.0% in Q3 followed by 4.0% growth in Q4.
For the full year (Q4/Q4) JPM now look for growth of -1.5%, a number which will
be more of a Great Depression-like -10% if the second half rebound does not
materialize.
And then: JPMorgan Now
Expects A Global Depression In The Second Quarter.
If a normalization in activity from depressed levels takes hold midyear
alongside building policy stimulus, the depth of the current downturn can be
seen as a springboard for a strong snapback in growth. However, there is a significant risk that the virus outbreak persists
and activity remains restricted for a longer time. In this environment, risks
rise that the depth of the initial shock unleashes negative forces that magnify
the hit to activity into 2H20. Notably, firms that had been hovering on the
margins of viability pre-crisis may not have sufficient equity to justify even
a subsidized extension of credit and may close. The longer the duration of the
interruption to activity, the deeper into the population of firms likely
closures will occur, and the greater the feedback into consumer incomes and
expectations.
Tuomas Malinen. GnS Economics.
There are two things people should understand about the real economic
fallout of the #COVID19, which has not YET hit. Thread.
Technically
Speaking: Risk Limits Hit, When Too Little Is Too Much.
Two things have now happened, which signaled us to reduce risk further in
portfolios.
Don’t dismiss this out of hand; worth considering worst-case scenarios
Von Greyerz: The
Demise Of The Financial System Is Imminent.
We are now facing a secular bear market which will last for at least 5-7
years. The economy will be in a recession and depression for much longer than
that.
Why do I think it is plausible? Well, because:
“on a global basis, the economy was primed for a crisis due to the rapid
rise of private sector debt in the wake of the 2008 meltdown. And as so often
happens in debt binges, the money goes to not-very-productive activities, from
overpriced college educations and share buybacks in the US to ghost cities in
China. As a result, the overall growth rate fails to compensate for the rising
loan burden.”
To wit:
Voxeu: Debt and
financial crises: Will history repeat itself?
The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation
in emerging and developing economies over the past 50 years. This column
examines these waves of debt and puts the fourth (current) wave in historical
context. The current wave of debt, which started in 2010, stands out for its
exceptional size, speed, and breadth. While the previous three waves all ended
with widespread financial crises, policymakers have a range of options to
reduce the likelihood of the current debt wave ending in crisis.
TD Rates March 18th:
Despite the S&P being
down 13% this week, 10y Treasury yields are 20bp higher (Fig 1). We think this
is a function of three factors:
1.
Constrained balance sheets
creating poor liquidity conditions, exaggerating price action.
2.
Demand for cash resulting in
the selling of "what you can rather than what you want to".
3.
Fears of a deluge of
Treasury supply due to fiscal easing.
(fwiw, I think #3 is likely
true at the margin, but trivial vs. #s 1&2… especially as (a) inflation
will be contained by recession; (b) Fed will buy Treasuries)
To JS’ point:
“Economic recession is an infrequent occurrence, but in a fundamental
sense recessions are the economy’s way of cleansing the “rot” out the system
that have been built up over time. This emanates from bad investments, bad
loans, bad policies, excessive risk and speculation. Recessions expose the
vulnerabilities of the economy and the financial system. Even though the proximate cause could come from an outside shock it’s
the weaknesses and imbalances that are the underlying cause. So when the “right” shock
comes along the fragile structure would collapse.”
… Recoveries from the last three recessions were painfully slow. They
were slowed by debt deleveraging cycle; commercial real estate and banking
(early 1990s), non-financial companies (early 2000s); and residential real
estate (starting in 2009). Odds are high that another debt deleveraging cycle
will arise soon since US non-financial companies started 2020 with record
levels of debt relative to GDP and cash flow. It would be a mistake to think
business and financial conditions would quickly return to levels prior to
coronavirus outbreak. Recession changes consumer and business behavior in ways
that are difficult to predict or forecast.
From: "It's A
Mistake To Think Business Conditions Will Quickly Return To Normal Levels". Joseph Carson.
"Unprecedented"
Global Policy Easing Has Failed To Curtail Credit Carnage.
David Rosernberg: Special Report: The Coronavirus
Shock: Which Sectors Get Hit Most, Which Ones Will Come
Back Earliest.
This Time, Can
We Finally Turn a Financial Crisis Into an Opportunity?
Once again, markets are crashing and taxpayers are bailing out wealthy
insiders. It's time we reform this perverse social contract.
Stephanie
Kelton: Congress Can Do for People What the Fed Did for Banks.
Congress has all the firepower it needs. It just needs to send spending
instructions to the Federal Reserve, as it always does.
Senator Dumped
Up to $1.7 Million of Stock After Reassuring Public About Coronavirus
Preparednes.
Regular Fare
James Montier: Memo to the
Investment Committee: Dare to be Different. GMO.
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
China Takes Axe
To Alternative Energy Funding, Slashing Subsidies For Solar And Wind.
Outgrowing growth: why quality of life, not GDP, should be our measure of success.
Other fare:
Nine Thoughts On
COVID-19 And What’s Coming.
Naomi Klein: Coronavirus Capitalism -- and how to beat it.
Fun Fare:
NASA fixes Mars
lander by telling it to hit itself with a shovel.
Quotes of the Week:
Dr. Marty Makary, a medical professor at Johns Hopkins University:
“Don’t believe the numbers when you see, even on our Johns Hopkins
website, that 1,600 Americans have the virus,” he said. “No, that means 1,600
got the test, tested positive. There are probably 25 to 50 people who have the
virus for every one person who is confirmed.” He added: “I think we have
between 50,000 and half a million cases right now walking around in the United
States.”
Matt Stoller: “This stuff was obvious,
except to economists.”
Re: his 2011 article:
How America
Could Collapse: Supply chain shocks have
already led to shortages of videotape and auto parts. Could food or medicine be
next?
According to a number of cognitive scientists, mankind uses its unique
ability to reason primarily for justifying pre-held convictions, rather than
for forming convictions. It is of critical importance for strategists to
understand and acknowledge this human tendency, as it causes one to easily fall
prey to a number of cognitive biases, which prevent one from seeing things how
they really are, and more important for the strategist, how they are likely to
become. One of the most famous cognitive biases is confirmation bias. As we prefer
to be proven correct, we naturally incline towards information that confirms
our views and try to ignore or reason away information that does not. This
tendency was on full display before, during and after the 2008 Global Financial
Crisis. At that time most analysts were continuously behind the facts,
consequently underestimating what would happen next, because reality went
against ideas and conviction that had become loved in the financial community
from: Is $10 Oil On
The Horizon? Andreas De Vries.
I’m going to give Central Banks an «A+» rating in what they have done so
far in this crisis. If I was the Fed Chairman this is what I would do. But it
looks like it might not work. So I can’t give Jay Powell an «F» because there’s
nothing more he could have done than what he has already done. The Fed did the
right thing, but in this environment, doing the right thing does not mean it will
work. So that leaves one tool left should risk markets continue to fall through
last week’s low: Close financial markets before they collapse.
Safe to assume, our best estimates of the damage to the labor market are
underestimates. Economists under-forecast the unemployment rate during 'normal'
recessions. Imagine now... when most of the labor market has been forcibly shut
down.
Tweets of the Week:
“it took a study from Imperial to understand the
likely burden of COVID-19 on the NHS. But read the first paper we published on
COVID-19 on Jan 24. 32% admitted to ITU with 15% mortality. We have wasted
7 weeks. This crisis was entirely preventable.
The morning
after the dramatic change in strategy to COVID-19 by this govt, I can’t
help but feel angry that it has taken almost two months for politicians
and even “experts” to understand the scale of the danger from
SARS-CoV-2. Those dangers were clear from the very beginning.
Chinese clinicians
and scientists—Chen Wang, George Gao, Chen Zhu, Bin Cao—did the world a great
service by immediately sharing their data, warning the world that SARS-CoV-2
was a dangerous new virus. I’m appalled to say that western “experts”
failed to heed their warnings.
Laura Kuenssberg
says (BBC) that, “The science has changed.” This is not true. The science has
been the same since January. What has changed is that govt advisors have at
last understood what really took place in China and what is now taking place in
Italy. It was there to see.”
“Been homeschooling a 6-year old
and 8-year old for one hour and 11 minutes. Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars a
year. Or a week.”
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