COVID-19 notes
Worldometer: Daily New Cases
COVID-19 Deaths
Explode In Russia, Mexico And Brazil As Global Cases Top 6.5 Million 7 million
… The virus “wants” one thing: to multiply. Just like any other being,
including us. And being both very lethal and very contagious doesn’t
help it do that (not that it’s trying). Earlier well-known
coronaviruses like SARS and MERS got that balance wrong. Because that’s what it is: a trade off between lethality and
contagiousness. Neither can be too high.
SARS is noted by the WHO for a case fatality rate (CFR) of 9.6%. At that
percentage, with the lethality and contagiousness it had/has, the virus lacks
the time to jump from old host to new host, especially when existing and
potential hosts are being isolated. MERS had a 34% CFR, and obviously didn’t
prevail long.
MERS never even really left Saudi Arabia (and appears to have never
achieved human-to-human transmission). SARS did get to other countries, I
remember especially Canada, but that whole epidemic was over in 7 months.
You need the right amount of contagiousness combined
with the right amount of lethality in order to have a pandemic. Jump from host
to host, but not too fast, because in no time every potential host
would be infected and develop antibodies (herd immunity). And not too lethal,
because not enough “old hosts” would be left to infect enough “new hosts”.
The present SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus appears to have
struck a delicate balance. People may say it’s not all that contagious, and
it’s not so lethal, but it’s those qualities that enabled it to be a pandemic. One thing it hasn’t
achieved yet is becoming endemic, and we would be wise to keep it that way. But
the odds that we will have a vaccine before we can do that are slim.
Where to go from here is very opaque. People shout out for the
world to be opened, but all they will get is a small part of that world. Mass events, bars, restaurants, subways, planes, and so much more, can
no longer function the way they did. As long as the virus is out there, it may be
‘only’ modestly contagious and lethal, but enough that people will be willing
to avoid many things that were considered normal before 2020.
That will lead to huge changes in society, enormous amounts of jobs
that will not return. If we fail to adapt to those things as badly as we
failed in our lockdowns, the changes can only become even larger, even deeper, until there may be little
left that we still readily recognize.
There are still very few, if any, countries where everyone is tested for
SARS-CoV-2. We will need to test everyone at least once a week, and
twice on Sundays. And isolate whoever tests positive. It didn’t need to come to
this, but we all screwed up something awful (except for a very few countries).
Get ready for the next round; there is no other way
out. And if we let the virus become endemic, and it returns in waves of
every year or so, the testing regimen will have to continue too. Until there is
a vaccine, but that may never come. Or we reach herd immunity, but that is
merely a fickle concept used mostly for cattle and may never come either. Or
only at the cost of millions of lives.
JPMorgan Is
"Counting The Days" Until The Second Covid Wave
COVID-19 Can
Last for Several Months
The disease’s “long-haulers” have endured relentless waves of
debilitating symptoms—and disbelief from doctors and friends.
Could the next
pandemic be 100 times worse than COVID-19?
As the world tries to cope with the severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes coronavirus disease (COVID-19), Dr.
Michael Herschel Greger has claimed that worse could be yet to come. The
American nutrition expert has claimed in his latest book that the next pandemic
could be due to virus emanating from poultry farms.
How The 'Lost
Art' Of Breathing Can Impact Sleep And Resilience
Regular Related Fare:
The Simple Case For "Buying Everything"
Right Now
The enthusiasm in markets at the moment is bordering
on euphoria. Retail money is pouring into the flavour-of-the-day and now FOMO
is taking over more broadly. You have to decide if you're in or out. We all
know the risks around the virus and the current economic data and it takes a
huge leap of faith to pile in here but betting on humanity has been the best
bet in world history.
1.
We’re in the post pandemic
world
2.
Fiscal conservatism is dead
3.
Low rates forever
…
The other side
I get it. This is all madness. We're going to have 20%
unemployment in tomorrow's non-farm payrolls report and it will still be around
10% at year-end. Business are closing at unprecedented rates and they're never
coming back. The virus isn't dead and could rage in a second wave. It's all
non-sense. The economy is aging and young people are crushed under student
debt.
But the choice you have to is either believe in the
bull case or get on the sidelines because this party is just starting. Of
course it will end it tears and there will be an ebb and flow but unless virus
numbers start to spike, it's not going to end soon.
Dow Soars Over 1000 Points Since Riots Started
So there is this...
·
Worst social unrest in 50 years (cops killed, cities
burning, stores looted nationwide)
·
Global Pandemic ongoing (some reopenings but 2nd wave
cropping up)
·
WHO sees no drug showing any efficacy in reducing
mortality (but we rallied for weeks on vaccine hope)
·
Economic collapse (no v-shaped recovery in any 'hard'
or 'soft' data)
·
Earnings plunge (recovery being pushed out)
·
US-China tensions increasing
And then there's this - The Dow is up over 1000 points
from Sunday night's open
Covid-19
Recessions: This Time It’s Really Different
Conversation is
changing from liquidity to solvency.
Art Berman: Oil Prices and
Demand are not Returning to Normal
An L-Shaped Recovery
I don’t believe that most people have come to terms with the reality of
oil markets going forward. The Covid-19 economic shut-down was not a switch
that was turned off and now is turned on as economies begin to open.
… The International Energy Agency and OPEC expect 2020 world demand to be
about 9 mmb/d less than in 2019. Those forecasts feature a V-shaped demand
recovery that strikes me as either naively optimistic or wantonly patronizing
to its funders’ expectations.
… We are witnessing a momentous transformation of the world economy.
Covid-19 was the trigger but the forces it is disrupting have been developing
for a long time. Chief among those is the debt undertaken to perpetuate
economic growth when common sense indicated it should have slowed or ended
decades ago.
Energy is the economy and oil is the most important part of energy today.
It is not surprising that oil should be the proverbial canary in the coal mine
for the rest of the economy.
Oil prices are not returning to normal. Neither is the economy.
GMO:
Ben
Inker: Uncertainty Has Seldom Been Higher; Oddly, Neither Has the Stock Market
Jeremy
Grantham: The Virus, The Economy, and the Market
In a letter to GMO investors, Grantham writes that "we have never
lived in a period where the future was so uncertain" and yet "the
market is 10% below its previous high in January when, superficially at least,
everything seemed fine in economics and finance. And if not “fine,” well, good
enough. The future paths include many that could change corporate
profitability, growth, and many aspects of capitalism, society, and the global
political scene."
Grantham also highlights the obvious: that the market and the economy
have never been more disconnected, and points out that while "the current
P/E on the U.S. market is in the top 10% of its history... the U.S. economy in
contrast is in its worst 10%, perhaps even the worst 1%.... This is apparently
one of the most impressive mismatches in history."
About that gangbuster jobs report:
Regular Fare:
The Staggering
"Powell Bubble"
Rationalizing
high valuations won’t improve future return outcomes.
As investors, our job is not only to invest for today but to understand
the potential of long-term impacts.
When considering stock valuations, one should only use the past 12-months
of reported earnings, known as GAAP earnings, which includes “all of the bad
stuff.” The reason is that all analysis uses trailing GAAP earnings as the
denominator. These are “known” earnings and makes valuation analysis more
reliable.
Conversely, Wall Street analysts use operating earnings, or “earnings
without all that bad stuff,” to deflate multiples using forward “guesses.” This
method provides the rationalization for overpaying for assets during periods of
excess valuations.
Importantly, using operating earnings also provides a faulty comparison
between valuation models which are largely based on “known” trailing earnings.
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Proponents of renewable energy have faced criticism for years that while
wind and solar power generate clean energy, the supply chain behind the
technologies used in wind tower turbines and solar panels is far from
environmentally friendly and sustainable. Most wind towers on which blades are
installed are made of steel - one of the most carbon-intensive industries in
the world and one that has not yet found a viable large-scale solution to cut
emissions. The higher the tower, the more wind it can potentially capture, but
it would also cost more because of the production and transportation costs of
steel towers to power generation sites. A new concept design and material for
wind towers could hold the key to carbon-neutral and a more cost-efficient wind
power generation - wooden tower structures made of renewable engineered wood
products
Big Thoughts:
Deresponsibilization
and the Politics of Escape
… Severe mispricing and absence of meaningful downside is always harmful.
It leads to far-reaching and catastrophic outcomes. Removal of the downside
decouples decision making from its consequences and creates a dangerous world
of irresponsible behavior with predictable long-term outcomes. Good judgment is
based on experience and experience is based on past bad judgment — exposure to
downside, i.e. suffering the consequences of our mistakes, is an essential part
of learning. Denial of downside intercepts the corrective loop of knowledge
acquisition and prevents the formation of experience as an essential part of
our existence.
The existence of real and consequential downside is a friction that is
necessary for the stability of any sociopolitical, financial, or biological
system that involves risk, like social contacts, relationships, sexual encounters,
family, economics, business, .., law, politics, crime or any other human
activity.
So, why are we thinking of Impossible Games that have no right to exist?
The 20th century was largely a century of innovations and new discoveries.
However, every novelty introduces new risks and consequences. Invention of a
ship is invention of a shipwreck; invention of a plane is invention of a plane
crash, nuclear power plant of nuclear meltdown. Progress and disaster are two sides of the same coin, and the more
revolutionary and impactful the innovation, the more spectacular the disaster
it creates. We have been harvesting the
benefits of those discoveries for decades. This is what the last century was
about. However, the 21st century is shaping up to be the century of disasters.
The accident reveals the substance of innovation. Only now are we
beginning to get a full taste of this causality. 9/11, global financial crisis,
inequality, climate change, economic stagnation, structural unemployment,
populism… they are all consequences of the 20th century innovation streak
(scientific, political or socioeconomic).
While the innovation paradigm has become an irresistible profit-making
machine, embraced by the capital, there is a persistent
parallel effort to externalize the downside that comes with it by distancing
decision makers from the consequences of their decisions. This has been the
unmistakable trend of the first two decades of this century. However, in the
last four years, this effort has entered an accelerated phase.
Social Unrest in a Time of COVID:
Peter Turchin: 2020
I have written elsewhere that the causes of rebellions and revolutions
are in many ways similar to processes that cause earthquakes or forest fires.
In both revolutions and earthquakes, it is useful to distinguish “pressures”
(structural conditions, which build up slowly) from “triggers” (sudden
releasing events, which immediately precede a social or geological eruption).
Specific triggers of political upheavals are difficult, perhaps even impossible
to predict with any precision. Every year the police kill hundreds of
Americans: black and white, men and women, adults and children, criminals and
law-abiding citizens. The US cops have already killed 400 people in just the
first five months of 2020. Why was it the murder of George Floyd that sparked
the wave of protests?
Unlike triggers, structural pressures build up slowly and more
predictably, and are amenable to analysis and forecasting. Furthermore, many
triggering events themselves are ultimately caused by pent-up social pressures
that seek an outlet—in other words, by the structural factors.
….
What is much more certain is that the deep structural drivers
for instability continue to operate unabated. Worse, the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated several of these instability
drivers. This means that even after the current wave of indignation, caused by
the killing of George Floyd, subsides, there will be other triggers that will
continue to spark more fires—as long as the structural forces, undermining the
stability of our society, continue to provide abundant fuel for them.
… Covid is not going to go away this summer. Multiple states have
reopened without getting it at all under control. Testing has been reduced, but
even so numbers show only minor descreases. So we have a pandemic, a population
nearing 30% unemployment, people who can’t pay the rent, and 40 years of
impoverishment and brutality. This summer has been a long
time coming, and it’s only starting. Even if this wave of protests is crushed
or dies down, the smart money is that it isn’t the last.
… But let’s be conscious of the scale of potential harms, of the risks we
are collectively taking, with “we” here including the protestors and the police
in their codependent dance, people like me and perhaps you on the sidelines,
encouraging one group or the other, public figures who could perhaps diffuse
the situation, the public as a whole. Maybe the “reopeners” were right after
all that the hazards of this pandemic are actually pretty manageable. Maybe the
virus simply does not transmit very easily outdoors and in heat, maybe
widespread mask-wearing dramatically reduces its infectivity, maybe loads of
people can hang out outside, even chanting and shouting, if they do their best
to stay masked when they are not chanting or shouting and at least six feet
apart. Maybe the number of people getting arrested and dangerously confined is
too small to make a dent in the pandemic, however dramatic it all looks on TV.
But maybe not. These are things we just don’t know. Jumping on them is
accepting risks most of us thought premature when Georgia and Florida and Texas
started “opening” a month ago (now we begin to see a mortality bump). This current cycle of current protest and suppression might prove not so
terrible, epidemiologically speaking. Or it might prove really terrible. We
don’t know. If it is really terrible, how really terrible would
it be?
… I am not saying that people should stand down now. Acts of violent suppression
make it untenable for protesters to stand down. I am saying that the costs and
risks of this form of political struggle, at this time, are dizzyingly higher
than they usually are due to the pandemic (and even in usual times, the stakes
are very high). I am pleading that all sides take into account the
very real risk of mass death that attends the path that we are currently on,
and find ways to deescalate from epidemiologically dangerous tactics without
betraying causes and values that are inviolable.
Amnesty International: With Whom are
Many US Police Departments Training? With a Chronic Human Rights Violator –
Israel.
COPERTY DAMAGE. Agent Provocateurs: Police at Protests All Over the Country Caught
Destroying Property
Civil Unrest Was
Inevitable - Here's How It Will Be Exploited To Bring In Tyranny
The point is, psychopathic cops kill people regardless of their skin
color. White people are at risk as much as black people. But at least when a
black person is wrongly killed, the public and the media might take serious
notice. There were no nationwide protests or riots for Daniel Shaver. The establishment works in favor of psychopaths, not white people.
… There are evil people of every race and ethnicity in this world that do
terrible things, however, the worst people are those that exploit the tensions
that these evil people create in order to turn crisis into opportunity. The
reason there are riots happening globally now in the wake of the death of
George Floyd is because people are angry, but also, people are malleable and
easy to manipulate when they are angry.
The country has just partially “reopened” from the pandemic lockdowns, and more lockdowns are likely before the year is out. .. Government
restrictions have been accelerating, and people are already on edge. Riots are
now an inevitable part of daily life in America.
The Myth of Systemic Police Racism
Hold officers accountable who use excessive force. But there’s no evidence of widespread racial bias.
Fun Fare:
Honest (Aussie) Government Ad / Coronavirus: Economic Recovery (DERP)
Lack of planes
sees dragons return to Norfolk skyline
COPS to release
2-hour ‘Just the Beatings’ DVD
Quotes of the Week:
Lebowitz and
Scott: “Market pundits seem to have strong opinions
about how fast or slow the economic recovery will be once it starts. Such
clairvoyance is stunning given the uncertainty of the current GDP forecast,
which is already two-thirds in the books. If the world’s leading economists
cannot come to any consensus about today, why should we assume anyone has
clarity for tomorrow?
"No surprise that Citigroup’s sentiment model is pointing
to a state of euphoria among investors. Why? The answer is simple: the Fed has
created the biggest legalized casino in the world, and with everyone winning
who would want to leave when the fun is just starting.”
Bill Dudley: "So for the Federal
Reserve to intervene and support those asset prices, is basically creating a
little bit of moral hazard”
Tweets of the Week:
Ottawa: “The Koch’s woke up to a full grown moose in their pool. Ministry of
natural resources is on their way. It’s been about 2 hours.”
George Floyd’s funeral is expected to have
hundreds or thousands of attendees, including high profile politicians like
Biden. Meanwhile people have not been allowed to go to their own family members
funerals due to COVID.
Pics of the Week:
The Floyd protests are the
broadest in U.S. history — and are spreading to white, small-town America
From email correspondence with regular reader :
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