COVID-19 notes
Government of Canada: Coronavirus
disease (COVID-19): Outbreak update
See Which States Are Reopening (updated May 18)
Virus Survivors Could Suffer Severe Health Effects for
Years
More than one million people around the world have
been deemed recovered from the coronavirus, but beating the initial sickness
may be just the first of many battles for those who have survived. Some
recovered patients report breathlessness, fatigue and body pain months after
first becoming infected. Small-scale studies conducted in Hong Kong and Wuhan,
China show that survivors grapple with poorer functioning in their lungs, heart
and liver. And that may be the tip of the iceberg. The coronavirus is now known
to attack many parts of the body beyond the respiratory system, causing damage
from the eyeballs to the toes, the gut to the kidneys.
Foreign Affairs Runs Propaganda from Swedish Employers
on Sweden’s Covid-19 Fiasco, Failing
to Disclose Sponsorship and Misrepresenting Results
this “Who cares if more people die” posture hasn’t
helped the Swedish economy much either, even though that’s the supposed
justification for running unnecessary health risks. Yet Sweden getting the
worst of all possible worlds is nevertheless spun as an accomplishment, and
most incredibly, a model.
How Covid Will Play Out In America
Meanwhile Trump and many governors have started to
move to ease isolation requirements. There are three problems here.
First, the curve hasn’t been crushed, in fact in some
states it’s still increasing.
Second, even once a curve has been crushed, to keep it
under control without a vaccine you need to test and trace. America would need
to hire hundreds of thousands of tracers to do this, and would need many more
tests than are currently available.
Third, Covid-19 takes about 2 weeks from infection
before people show symptoms, and two weeks more before they start dying. During
the asymptomatic period carriers are contagious
…
Humans are really bad at making decisions where the
consequences are delayed. (See Change, Climate). Even a two week to month delay
is more than the decision makers in many countries, including the US, can
handle. So, the numbers seem to be in decline, and there will be removal of
restrictions and then the numbers will start increasing in two weeks to a month
and a half. Since they will be moving off a larger base, this will create a
second wave where people start dropping like flies: much larger than the
first wave.
Coronavirus Magical Thinking, US Style: Contact
Tracing Versus Masks
Since the US is a federal system with an
Administration that refused to take coronavirus seriously early enough, and now
seems determined to validate its original decision by doubling down on it,
it is a bit simplistic to speak of a “coronavirus response,” since cities and
states have been taking the lead and they’ve gone down different paths.
Nevertheless, due to the decision by many governments,
particularly in the South, to start relaxing restrictions, I’m coming across way
too many rationalizations. And one of them is that officials can make
things safe enough with approaches like contact tracing. Mind you, as you will
see, the point is that contact tracing, or any information gathering,
practiced on an insufficient scale and without programs to take disease
containment steps using that data, is at best misguided, and at worst, intended
to build false confidence.
Put it another way: the enthusiasm for a gee-whiz,
tech based approach with no real world back end doesn’t merely reflect a
lack of operational capacity. It reflects a grave decline in basic
problem-solving and planning skills, as in how do you get from A to B. And
there bizarrely is limited interest in the one thing that could be done easily
and cheaply, which is getting tough about mask-wearing.
….
On the one hand, it’s great news that have a simple
remedy that could get large swathes of the economy back to normal. On the
other, the US seems so unable to get out of our own underwear that it’s not
clear we are wiling to do something simple that works because no opportunities
for corporate grift can be found. Can’t let those Gilead stockholders down,
now can we?
Lockdown Learned Helplessness.
… But the deeper problem is that nothing about
SARS-CoV-2 has changed. The purpose of “flattening the curve” – which the
lockdown is meant to achieve – was never about “saving lives” – at least, not
directly. The idea was that more or less
the same number of us would die. But if
we all died at once, we would overwhelm critical infrastructure including – but
not limited to – the National Health Service. By spreading the deaths over several months or
possibly even several years, critical infrastructure could be maintained even
if more frivolous economic activities like eating out or watching football had
to be curtailed. The conceit has been that Big Pharma would ride to the rescue
with a vaccine or a treatment that would save lives if only we could slow the
spread for long enough. What they didn’t
tell you – but they have known all along – is that:
·
The quickest development of a vaccine took four years
– the 1967 mumps vaccine
·
Nobody has ever developed a safe vaccine for a corona
virus – a seriously unsafe one was developed and quickly abandoned for
SARS-CoV-1
·
SARS-CoV-2 is not the same as the flu – corona viruses
mutate far faster than vaccines can be developed.
…..
But new drugs like Remdesivir have no noticeable
impact on the number of deaths. Indeed,
since the manufacturer, Gilead, has failed to make all of the trial data
public, we would be foolish to take seriously even the claim that the drug
might shorten the illness by a few days for those lucky enough to recover. Existing
drugs – including Mr Trump’s hydroxychloroquine – have also showed some
promise. But nobody is about to stump up
the cash needed to run a randomised double-blind clinical trial into a drug that is already
available at cents per pack – there’s not enough money to be made from selling
old drugs even if they appear to cure or even prevent Covid-19. Unless a government or governments were to
stump up the cash, trials of older drugs are not going to happen; and so they
will never be approved as a treatment for Covid-19.
All of which brings us back to herd immunity. The truth is – and governments have known
this from the start – that herd immunity is – and was – the only game in
town. From the moment SARS-CoV-2 found
its way into a human cell and began to spread, the only question was how the
impact could be managed so that the spread could be slowed, the numbers
requiring hospital treatment minimised and the inevitable deaths spreads out so
as not to overwhelm the system. And, of
course, all of this has to be achieved without crashing the economy to the
point that recovery becomes impossible.
Reopening: A Chronicle of Needless Deaths Foretold
The president of the United States has made a
decision—sort of—that despite the lack of sufficient testing, resources to
embark upon the tracing of the contacts of all people testing positive for
Covid-19, and the ability to humanely isolate those infected, we are
nevertheless reopening as a country. Of course, the president cannot simply
order this to happen; states and localities have responsibility for these kinds
of public health decisions, not the federal government. But his message is
clear: “We have met the moment and we have prevailed,” he announces, declaring
victory over the pandemic at least in his own rear view mirror.
The reality, of course, couldn’t be more stark. Even
as the president proclaimed “mission accomplished,” the White House was in a
panic over an outbreak of Covid-19 at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, evincing a
newfound interest in personal protective equipment like masks, as three of the
most senior health officials in the nation went into self-isolation after
possible exposure to the coronavirus in the West Wing.
But this is what’s in store for us as a country. Two
sets of rules: policies and procedures guided by sound public health principles
in the circle around the president, while state governors who heed the
president’s call to reopen ignore basic advice, even the White House’s own
“Opening Up American Again” guidelines, with more than half of the states
reopening seeing rising, not falling, Covid-19 case counts.
If 80% of Americans Wore Masks, COVID-19 Infections
Would Plummet, New Study Says
Yaneer Bar-Yam: Don't let governors fool you about reopening
as a pandemic expert who has been warning about
diseases like Covid-19 for nearly 15 years, my message to Americans is simple:
save yourselves, your families and your communities by staying at home and
ignoring your governor's "ludicrous" policies.
…
Why will going along with reopening lead to
catastrophe?
First, we must understand that coronavirus is very
deadly. Those who claim the death rate is exaggerated are plain wrong and
downplaying the emergency. While death rate estimates have varied, recent data
from China, the United Kingdom and France, reflecting deaths outside hospitals,
including in nursing homes, puts the Covid-19 global fatality rate at around
6.8%, based upon analysis we did at endcoronavirus.org, using data from Johns
Hopkins University.
Second, almost all reopening states, from California
to Pennsylvania, currently have a critical mass of new cases of existing
infections that could see new outbreaks in the coming days and weeks.
Third, without extreme preventive measures, we've seen
how coronavirus infections doubled every two to three days at one point in
different areas -- which equated to about a tenfold increase per week. That means
that a state with 1,000 new cases could have well over 100,000 more in two
weeks, if social distancing is loosened.
America’s Chilling Experiment in Human Sacrifice
Regular Related Fare:
We haven’t even begun to grasp how much damage the
pandemic will do
… But the idea that life will soon return to normal is
a fantasy, especially given new government estimates that show we might be
facing 3,000 daily deaths by the end of the month — the equivalent of a
9/11-scale tragedy every single day. Yet even leaving the human and health-care
toll aside, the scale of the economic problem ahead is larger and worse than
our leaders and politics appear capable of handling — or even recognizing.
James K. Galbraith: We need a
radically different model to tackle the COVID-19 crisis
To put any trust at all in the thesis that has powered
the market rebound, you’d need to place unquestioning faith in the concept of a
‘V-shaped’ economic recovery.
… After all, prolonged support from the Federal
Reserve and other central banks has created a ‘positivity bias’ in the minds of
investors, so it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to everyone else if the recent
sharp rally in stocks turned out to be a colossal exercise in complacency and
wishful thinking.
There are, though, far broader economic implications
to the probability that, like investors, the government and business ‘high
command’ has reached the point at which trust in a ‘V-shaped’ recovery starts
to evaporate. Indeed, ‘ditching the V’ would have profound consequences, both
for policy and for the practicalities of “exit” from lockdowns.
…
Of course, neither the consensus nor the ‘high
command’ is going to accept the broader economic de-growth thesis any time soon
– established ways of thinking are far too entrenched for that. But what they
are likely to do is to abandon trust in a ‘deep V’ recovery, not just in
aviation, but more broadly too. De-growth itself may remain a long way from
acceptance, but two economic aspects of the coronavirus crisis are gradually
gaining recognition.
One of these is that we face a very protracted period
of “co-existence” between the virus itself and resumed economic activity. The
second is that some industries might not be able to survive for the duration of
this extended co-existence. Together, these two considerations, extended
across the economy as a whole, are likely to be more than enough to kill off
the recovery in the markets. More importantly, we can expect ‘abandonment of V’
to have far-reaching implications for policy.
…
As and when the virus recedes, most households are
likely to have experienced a draining of their savings, an increase in their
debts and a meaningful reduction in their incomes. To health-related fears will
have been added a new financial conservatism, reflected in a reduced propensity
to engage in discretionary (non-essential) purchases.
…
Governments which might have been willing to support
companies and sectors through a relatively short hiatus will take a markedly
less accommodating line when faced with the prospect of providing such support
for a very much longer time. They might also reflect that bankruptcy, whilst it
wipes out shareholders, does not in fact ‘destroy’ businesses and their assets,
but simply transfers ownership to creditors.
Framing these considerations will be recognition that
the resources of governments face deep and permanent impairment, and that
public priorities are very likely to have changed.
What is emerging now – and is likely to reach even
into the rarefied levels of investor calculation – is that neither the
assurance nor the comparative simplicity of a V-shaped recovery is persuasive.
The wise course from here would be an acceptance, if
not (yet) of de-growth, then of a wholly altered economic, financial, political
and social landscape. Denial will of course continue in many quarters, but the
centre of gravity will move fundamentally as a single observation gains traction.
That observation is that a ‘V-shaped’ recovery is not
going to happen.
Hussman: Amygdalotomy: Surviving the Intentional Demolition of Warning Signs
We begin with several propositions, all that will be
demonstrated below, but that may be useful to include up-front in order to
prime what follows:
1) One of the most dangerous forces currently
threatening U.S. economic, financial, and public health is the intentional
demolition of warning signs that would otherwise enhance survival.
2) Market lows associated with U.S. recessions have
generally occurred at valuations that were about 40% of those prevailing today
– and sometimes even less. If investors assume that valuations will never again
approach historical norms, they must also accept that future investment returns
will be dismal compared to historical norms. To say that “low interest rates
justify high valuations in stocks” is also to say “low interest rates justify
low future returns in stocks.” If one wishes to protect overvalued prices, one
also has to accept meager long-term returns.
3) Investors should be careful to avoid the
misconception that easy money always supports the market. The fact is that
market outcomes are conditional on whether investor psychology is inclined
toward speculation or toward risk aversion. This is best inferred directly from
the uniformity or divergence of market internals. Despite the fact that the Fed
eased the whole way down during the 2000-2002 and 2007-2009 collapses,
investors have come to believe that Fed easing always supports stock prices.
That’s the wrong lesson, and the re-education of investors is likely to be
excruciating.
4) As long as the public has confidence in government
liabilities, the Fed can do as much “quantitative easing” as it wants – buying
government bonds and replacing them with base money – or vice versa, and it
won’t change the underlying belief that those pieces of government paper are
“good” – regardless of which form they take. Quantitative easing in itself does
not produce inflation.
5) It is not simply currency creation that creates
inflation, but currency creation for the purpose of financing government
deficits, to such an extent that public confidence in government liabilities is
destabilized. The inflationary consequences tend to be particularly severe when
these deficits occur during “supply shocks” when production of goods and
services becomes constrained for one reason or another. ….
FT :CLOs: ground
zero for the next stage of the financial crisis?
vs Wall Street’s Useful Idiot: Financial Times Shills for
CLOs….as Fed Hasn’t Bailed Them Out
The next phase of America's coronavirus problem is a
massive housing crisis
There have been several programs and rules passed
already intended to help homeowners and renters. But, as usual in American
policymaking, these policies are haphazard, over-complicated, and incomplete.
Howard Marks: Uncertainty
Worth reading in full
All We Don’t Know
As everyone knows, today we’re experiencing
unprecedented (or at least highly exceptional) developments in four areas: the
pandemic, the economic contraction, the oil price collapse and the
Fed/government response. Thus, a number of considerations make the future
particularly unpredictable these days:
·
The field of economics is muddled and imprecise, and
there’s good reason it’s called “the dismal science.” Unlike a "real"
science like physics, in economics there are no rules that one can count on to
consistently produce a given outcome, as in “if a, then b.” There are only
patterns that tend to repeat, and while they may be historical, logical and
often-observed, they’re still only tendencies.
·
In some recent memos, I’ve mentioned Marc Lipsitch,
Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In my
version of hierarchy, there are (a) facts, (b) logical inferences from past
experience and (c) guesses. Because of the imprecision of economics, there
certainly are no facts about the economic future. Economists and investors make
inferences from past patterns, but these are unreliable at best, and I
think in many cases their judgments fall under the heading of
"guesses."
·
These days, I’m often asked questions like "Will
the recovery be V-shaped, or a U, W or L?" and "Which of the crises
you’ve lived through does this one most resemble?" Answering questions
like those requires a historical perspective.
·
Given the exceptional developments enumerated above,
however, there’s little or no history that’s relevant to today. That
means we don’t have past patterns to fall back on or to extrapolate from. As
I’ve said, if you’ve never experienced something before, you can’t say you know
how it’s going to turn out.
·
While unique developments
like those of today make forecasting unusually difficult, the presence of all
four elements at once probably renders it impossible. In addition to the difficulty of understanding each of the four
individually, we can’t be sure how they’ll interact. For example:
o
Will the massive, multi-faceted Fed/Treasury program
of loans, grants, stimulus and bond buying be sufficient to offset the
unparalleled damage done to the economy by the fight against Covid-19?
o
To what extent will the reopening bring back economic
activity, and to what extent will that cause the spread of the disease to
resume, and the renewal of lock-downs?
For investors, the future is determined by thousands
of factors, such as the internal workings of economies, the participants’
psyches, exogenous events, governmental action, weather and other forms of
randomness. Thus, the problem is enormously multi-variate. Take the current situation with its four
major components (Covid-19, the economy, oil and Fed), and consider just one:
the disease. Now think about all the
questions surrounding it:
·
How many people have it, including those who are
asymptomatic?
·
How likely is contact with someone who’s infected to
create another case?
·
To what degree will distancing and masks deter its
spread?
·
Will the cases be severe, mild or asymptomatic? Why?
·
Will the supply of protective gear for medical
personnel, hospital beds and ventilators be adequate?
·
Will a treatment be developed? To what extent will it
speed recovery and prevent fatalities?
·
What will the fatality rate be relative to age, gender
and pre-existing conditions? Will the impact of the disease on young people
worsen?
·
Will people who’ve had it and recovered be immune?
Will their immunity be permanent?
·
Will the virus mutate, and will immunity cover the new
forms?
·
Will it be possible to inject antibodies to prevent
infection?
·
How many people have to be immune for herd immunity to
effectively stop the further spread?
·
Will social distancing delay the achievement of herd
immunity? Is the Swedish approach better?
·
Will a vaccine be invented? When? How long will it
take to produce and deliver the needed doses? Where will the U.S. stand in the
line to get it?
·
How many people will refuse to be vaccinated? With
what effect?
·
Will vaccination have to be renewed annually?
·
Will the virus succumb to warm weather and humidity?
·
Will the virus be with us permanently, and will it be
controllable like “just another seasonal disease”?
Where am I going with this? My point is that very few people can
balance all these considerations to figure out our collective risk. And that’s just Covid-19. Now think about the many questions that
pertain to each of the three other factors.
Who can respond to this many questions, come up with valid answers,
consider their interaction, appropriately weight the various considerations on
the basis of their importance, and process them for a useful conclusion
regarding the virus’s impact?
….
As I’ve expressed in recent memos, I feel the process
through which most of us arrive at our view of the future is highly reflective
of our biases. Given the unusually wide chasm
between the optimistic and pessimistic cases at this time - and the
impossibility of choosing between them based on facts and historical precedents
(since there are none) – I continue to think about the role of bias.
One of the biggest mistakes an investor can make is
ignoring or denying his or her biases.
If there are influences that make our processes less than objective, we
should face up to this fact in order to avoid being held captive by them.
Our biases may be insidious, but they are highly influential. When I read articles about how difficult it
will be to provide adequate testing for Covid-19 or to get support to small
businesses, I’m pleased to see my wary views reinforced, and I find it easy to
incorporate those things into my thinking.
But when I hear about the benefits of reopening the economy or the
possibility of herd immunity, I find it just as easy to come up with
counter-arguments that leave my concerns undented. This is a clear example of “confirmation
bias” at work.
Regular Fare:
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Other Fare:
Some Catholics seeking
spiritual solace during the coronavirus pandemic are turning to the 2nd century
St. Corona (d. C. 170) as patron saint of plagues and epidemics.
Fun Fare:
SURE, THE
VELOCIRAPTORS ARE STILL ON THE LOOSE, BUT THAT’S NO REASON NOT TO REOPEN
JURASSIC PARK
Florida Governor
Deploys National Guard To Force Residents Back Into Malls, Movie Theaters
Reopen the Economy; or Charge of the Right Brigade (perhaps with apologies owed to Alfred Tennyson)
Quotes of the Week:
Jerome Powell: “I think you’ll see the
economy recover steadily through the second half of this year.”
Of course, he did preface that with: “"Assuming there's
not a second wave of the coronavirus,…”
And, meanwhile…
Dr. Anthony Fauci: “If we skip over the
checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger
of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in
needless suffering and death but would actually set us back on our quest to
return to normal.”
Oh yeah, and JP also said: “For the economy to fully recover people
will have to be fully confident, and that may have to await the arrival of a
vaccine,”
Rosie: “We are in an outright depression & won’t
recover for a long time…Those who expect recovery this year are delusional
because many of the job losses will be permanent & probably half of small
businesses will fail.”
Tweet of the Week:
Yaneer Bar-Yam: “20 countries Winning, 21 countries Nearly There, and
10 countries Needing to Act”
Pics of the Week:
It’s hard to get
people to agree on anything in polls… but we agree about the coronavirus
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