Monday, March 16, 2020

Coronavirus News (7)



Coronavirus: China’s economy suffers dramatic collapse in January, February in warning to rest of world industrial production – a measure of manufacturing, mining and utilities activity – declined by 13.5 per cent over the first two months of the year ........ the numbers were well below expectations of a 3.0 per cent decline. ....... Retail sales, a key metric of consumption in the world’s second largest economy, fell by 20.5 per cent, again the first decline on record. ..... Fixed asset investment – a gauge of expenditure on items including infrastructure, property, machinery and equipment – collapsed by 24.5 per cent, much worse than analysts’ predictions of minus 2.0 per cent. ....... a prolonged containment effort that left hundreds of millions of people unable to return to work ....... the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates to near zero, as well as announcing that it would embark on a new round of quantitative easing. ....... Global markets shrugged off the cut, suggesting that more creative policy measures may be required to arrest the prospect of a recession. ........ manufacturing output alone had slumped by 15.7 per cent over January and February, while investment in the sector fell by a massive 31.5 per cent. .......

Ultimately the global economic shock from Covid-19 needs a global response



States order bar closures and restaurant restrictions as coronavirus cases climb
Illinois gov says White House staffer 'yelled' at him over tweet blasting federal response to airport crowds

As coronavirus recession threatens, economists recommend cash for people High on that list: Giving money directly to people — fast. ...... any prolonged downturn fueled by the coronavirus is likely to be caused by something more basic than the financial bubble that led to the post-housing crash slump and recessions: A sharp decline in consumer spending, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of economic activity. ....... As more people practice the "social distancing" measures that health authorities recommend, they are canceling trips and staying in more, slowing the economy. That means as the number of coronavirus cases grows, its economic effects could escalate quickly. ....... He was less enthusiastic about other reported fixes, such as tax breaks or targeted industry bailouts........

send $1,000 to every individual, and an additional $500 per child.

...... Other countries affected by the coronavirus are directing money to their citizens to lighten the economic blow. China is speeding up payments of unemployment benefits. France, Japan and Korea are boosting subsidies for workers to stay home to care for children, and France is giving money to people forced to self-quarantine. Hong Kong, among other measures, is offering the equivalent of $1,280 to permanent residents who've been affected by the outbreak. ....... a check from the federal government wouldn't be unprecedented. But for a presidential administration that has so far considered only top-down approaches to easing the economic pain, it would be unusual.

Yuval Harari: This is the worst epidemic in 'at least 100 years'
Peace Corps suspending operations, evacuating all volunteers over coronavirus

Trump tells US 'relax, we're doing great' as his virus expert says worst is yet to come Trump again appeared to downplay the threat of the novel coronavirus. “Relax, we’re doing great,” he said, during short, meandering comments that focused mostly on celebrating a decision by the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. “It all will pass.” ........ The president’s remarks stood in marked contrast to his lead infectious diseases expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, who used

the same conference

to warn: “The worst is ahead for us”, describing the crisis as reaching a “very, very critical point now”. Earlier in the day Dr Fauci had declined to rule out a “national lockdown” of bars and restaurants as he urged more aggressive measures, similar to those in Europe and elsewhere, to contain the virus. ........ California governor Gavin Newsom announced that the nation’s most populous state would enforce a closure of all bars and nightclubs, and make restaurants cut capacity by half. The governor also urged all those over 65 to self-isolate....... The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the leading US government agency for public health, announced a national recommendation shortly after, urging all gatherings of 50 people or over, including festivals, parades, weddings and sporting events, to be cancelled for the next eight weeks. ...... Twenty-four states have already announced some form of school closure ...... 1.9 million Covid-19 tests to be processed over the coming weeks at over 2,000 laboratories across the country. .......... the roll-out of more testing would lead to a “spike” in positive results.

Reporter: White House Knew Of Coronavirus' 'Major Threat,' But Response Fell Short
Coronavirus updates: Death toll surges, schools close and a warning - CDC says no large gatherings for 8 weeks
Coronavirus concerns brings North American box office to 20-year low
Social distancing could have devastating effect on people with depression "Isolation is so devastating to our own mood because we're left stuck with our own thoughts," a psychotherapist said.

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Sunday, March 15, 2020

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South Korea’s coronavirus response is the opposite of China and Italy – and it’s working Seoul’s handling of the outbreak emphasises transparency and relies heavily on public cooperation in place of hardline measures such as lockdowns ........... With about 8,000 confirmed cases and more than 65 deaths, it was until recently the country with the most confirmed cases outside China – but South Korea has since emerged as a source of inspiration and hope for authorities around the world as they scramble to fight the pandemic........ a highly coordinated government response that has emphasised transparency and relied heavily on public cooperation in place of hardline measures such as lockdowns ...... South Korea has not restricted people’s movements – not even in Daegu, the southeastern city at the centre of the country’s outbreak. ........ authorities have focused mandatory quarantine on infected patients and those with whom they have come into close contact, while advising the public to stay indoors, avoid public events, wear masks and practise good hygiene........ while numerous countries have imposed sweeping travel bans – including the US, which has introduced dramatic restrictions on travel from Europe – Seoul has instead introduced “special immigration procedures” for heavily affected countries such as China, requiring travellers to undergo temperature checks, provide verified contact information and fill out health questionnaires. ....... [South Korea’s] approach seems less dramatic and more usable by other countries, compared with that used in mainland China ...... The linchpin of South Korea’s response has been a testing programme that has screened more people per capita for the virus than any other country by far. By carrying out up to 15,000 tests per day, health officials have been able to screen some 250,000 people – about one in every 200 South Koreans – since January......... To encourage participation, testing is free for anyone referred by a doctor or displaying symptoms after recent contact with a confirmed case or travel to China. For anyone simply concerned about the risk of infection, the cost is a relatively affordable 160,000 won (US$135). Testing is available at hundreds of clinics, as well as some 50 drive-through testing stations that took their inspiration from past counterterrorism drills and can screen suspected patients in minutes. ......... “This country has a universal health-coverage system for the whole population and the economic burden for testing is very low,” said Kim Dong-hyun, president of the Korean Society of Epidemiology. “Tests are conducted for free if you have proper symptoms.”.......... The massive volume of data collected has enabled the authorities to pinpoint clusters of infection to better target their quarantine and disinfection efforts, and send members of the public text-message alerts to inform them of the past movements of infected patients in their area – even down to the names of shops and restaurants they visited....... the fatality rate of which has diverged significantly from about 5 per cent in Italy to about 0.8 per cent in South Korea. ...... In the United States, where the authorities are unable to confirm the number of tests since they are being carried out by a patchwork of federal, state and private laboratories, the total was estimated to be fewer than 5,000 ....... South Korea is not unique in claiming some success in its fight against the virus. Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, informed by past outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Mers, have managed to keep confirmed cases low while eschewing the sort of draconian measures implemented in mainland China.......... Early on, Hong Kong took some of the most comprehensive steps to implement “social distancing” ....... South Korea .. The largest cluster of cases in the country is linked to a secretive religious sect, Shincheonji, members of which have been accused of negligently spreading the virus as well as evading medical follow-ups and testing. ........ In addressing the Covid-19 outbreak, sound decision-making should not be about making a choice between maximised protection and minimal disruption. ....... China effectively barred 60 million people in Wuhan – ground zero of the outbreak – and the rest of the province of Hubei from leaving their homes, while restricting the movements of hundreds of millions of others across the country by shutting down public transport, banning private cars and setting up roadblocks. ....... “Most democracies value human rights and freedoms … [not] the degree of social control we’ve seen in China. South Korea offers a better model.” ....... In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday announced a lockdown of the entire Metro Manila region and its 12.8 million people. ....... “The more transparently and quickly accurate information is provided, the more the people will trust the government,” he said. “They will act rationally for the good of the community at large.” ....... Some experts caution that it is too early to tell if South Korea truly has the virus under control. The discovery of a new cluster of about 100 infections at a call centre in densely populated Seoul prompted a sudden uptick in cases on Wednesday, raising fears the virus could be on the verge of spreading uncontrollably nationwide.

Amid coronavirus pandemic, India faces another danger Shaken by the incident, she wrote on Instagram: “The woman was making comments directed towards us suggesting we are Chinese. And when I confronted her she started to scream at us. This can happen to anyone from the Northeast”. ........ Pachau, a 24-year-old student at the University of Delhi, said he was harassed while on the way to college. ..... “I was just getting on the metro when a group of young men started pointing at me and saying ‘Corona virus aagaye’ [coronavirus has come here],” he said. ....... even politicians have spread fake news. Last month, Shweta Shalini, a politician from his Bharatiya Janata Party tweeted an article that claimed China was seeking court approval to kill 20,000 Covid-19 patients......... the amount of misinformation being spread on social media was almost impossible to counter. ....... According to official figures, India has reported only 100 infections and two deaths. The real number could be much higher given the virus’ ability to spread undetected from people with mild or no symptoms. ....... The following day, India reported its first coronavirus death as authorities ordered schools, theatres and cinemas closed in New Delhi for the rest of the month in a bid to keep the pandemic at bay.

As coronavirus epidemic eases in China, life is slowly returning to normal

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Saturday, March 14, 2020

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Worst-case coronavirus models show massive US toll

more than a million Americans could die

...... between 160 million and 210 million Americans could contract the disease over as long as a year. .......... as many as 21 million people might need hospitalization, a daunting figure in a nation with just about 925,000 hospital beds ....... 1.6 million if the virus carries a mortality rate of just 1 percent. ...... half of Americans will contract the virus. ......... between 20 percent and 60 percent of everyone on earth — or between 1.4 billion and 4.2 billion people — could eventually contract the disease..... If the virus only kills 1 percent of those who contract it, somewhere between 14 million and 42 million people are at risk. ....... China’s harsh crackdowns and enforced quarantines to South Korea’s vast army of testers who screen motorists at drive-through stations. ...... New York has even rolled out its own plan to make tens of thousands of gallons of hand sanitizer every day.

Trump shared table with another Mar-a-Lago guest who tested positive for coronavirus: White House doctor there was no need for the president to be quarantined. ....... the highly contagious virus, according to media reports, which has spread to more than 120 countries and killed at least 5,000 people worldwide....... He said that Trump’s exposure to Wajngarten was “extremely limited (photograph, handshake).” ...... While the president shared the same dinner table and “spent more time in closer proximity with the second case, all interactions occurred before any symptom onset.” ....... He said he will monitor Trump closely, but that “given the President himself remains without symptoms, testing for COVID-19 is not currently indicated.”



Gov. Cuomo says New York has most coronavirus cases in US as new cases jump 30% overnight to 421 New York state now has more cases than any other state in the U.S. as the number of newly confirmed infections surged by 30% overnight to 421, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Friday. ....... “This is not going to be a quick situation. This is going to be weeks, months,” Cuomo said at a press conference in Albany, N.Y. “My guess is there are thousands and thousands of cases walking around the state of New York.” ......

The nation’s first COVID-19 patient flew into the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Jan. 15 from Wuhan, China.

....... New York’s “numbers are spiking because our testing capacity is going up,” Cuomo said, adding New Yorkers will see 1,000 more cases next week. ....... Cuomo said his own daughter is under “precautionary” quarantine after she was possibly exposed to the virus. ...... “How could I protect my daughter? Why didn’t I protect my daughter? Because it’s impossible. It’s impossible,” he said. ........... On Thursday, Cuomo said the state is likely to see a spread of COVID-19 similar to that of China, South Korea and Italy, where the new coronavirus has millions of people under lockdown and has shuttered commerce. ............ “What makes you think that the virus in China, the virus in South Korea, the virus in Italy wasn’t going to react any differently than the virus here?” he said. “You are going to see the same trajectory that you saw in China, South Korea and Italy, and it is going to happen here as the virus spreads, because of the way it is actually contagious.”

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Thank God coronavirus didn't start in India: British economist Jim O'Neil Jim O' Neill, the former Goldman chief economist said, there’s no way India could react in the way China has. ..... lauded the model China has adopted to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and said western countries should try and emulate it.
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Friday, March 13, 2020

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The Trump Presidency Is Over When, in January 2016, I wrote that despite being a lifelong Republican who worked in the previous three GOP administrations, I would never vote for Donald Trump ........ Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office....... it’s reasonable to expect that a president will face an unexpected crisis—and at that point, the president’s judgment and discernment, his character and leadership ability, will really matter....... Mr. Trump’s virulent combination of ignorance, emotional instability, demagogy, solipsism and vindictiveness would do more than result in a failed presidency; it could very well lead to national catastrophe. ........ the crisis has arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s hard to name a president who has been as overwhelmed by a crisis as the coronavirus has overwhelmed Donald Trump......... the president and his administration are responsible for grave, costly errors, most especially the epic manufacturing failures in diagnostic testing, the decision to test too few people, the delay in expanding testing to labs outside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and problems in the supply chain. These mistakes have left us blind and badly behind the curve, and, for a few crucial weeks, they created a false sense of security. What we now know is that the coronavirus silently spread for several weeks, without us being aware of it and while we were doing nothing to stop it. Containment and mitigation efforts could have significantly slowed its spread at an early, critical point, but we frittered away that opportunity...............

“They’ve simply lost time they can’t make up. You can’t get back six weeks of blindness”

.......... “The idea of anybody getting [testing] easily, the way people in other countries are doing it, we’re not set up for that.......... We also know the World Health Organization had working tests that the United States refused, and researchers at a project in Seattle tried to conduct early tests for the coronavirus but were prevented from doing so by federal officials. (Doctors at the research project eventually decided to perform coronavirus tests without federal approval.) ........ The president reportedly ignored early warnings of the severity of the virus and grew angry at a CDC official who in February warned that an outbreak was inevitable. The Trump administration dismantled the National Security Council’s global-health office, whose purpose was to address global pandemics; we’re now paying the price for that.......... We may face a shortage of ventilators and medical supplies, and hospitals may soon be overwhelmed, certainly if the number of coronavirus cases increases at a rate anything like that in countries such as Italy. (This would cause not only needless coronavirus-related deaths, but deaths from those suffering from other ailments who won’t have ready access to hospital care.) .........

the avalanche of false information from the president has been most alarming of all. It’s been one rock slide after another, the likes of which we have never seen..... Trump is in the process of discovering that he can’t spin or tweet his way out of a pandemic. ...... the president delivered an Oval Office address that was meant to reassure the nation and the markets but instead shook both .... “Almost everything that could have gone wrong with the speech did go wrong.”

....... this is a massive failure in leadership that stems from a massive defect in character. Trump is such a habitual liar that he is incapable of being honest, even when being honest would serve his interests. He is so impulsive, shortsighted, and undisciplined that he is unable to plan or even think beyond the moment. He is such a divisive and polarizing figure that he long ago lost the ability to unite the nation under any circumstances and for any cause. And he is so narcissistic and unreflective that he is completely incapable of learning from his mistakes. The president’s disordered personality makes him as ill-equipped to deal with a crisis as any president has ever been......... a bystander “as school superintendents, sports commissioners, college presidents, governors and business owners across the country take it upon themselves to shut down much of American life without clear guidance from the president” ....... The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point, when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation. ......

The Trump presidency is over.





Worst-Case Estimates for U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Projections based on C.D.C. scenarios show a potentially vast toll. But those numbers don’t account for interventions now underway. ........ four possible scenarios — A, B, C and D — based on characteristics of the virus, including estimates of how transmissible it is and the severity of the illness it can cause. ........ the worst-case figures would be staggering if no actions were taken to slow transmission. ...... Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die. ......... 2.4 million to 21 million people in the United States could require hospitalization,

potentially crushing the nation’s medical system

, which has only about 925,000 staffed hospital beds. .......... testing for the virus, tracing contacts, and reducing human interactions by stopping mass gatherings, working from home and curbing travel...... “You can’t win. If you overdo it, you panic everybody. If you underdo it, they get complacent. You have to be careful.” ..... Studies of previous epidemics have shown that the longer officials waited to encourage people to distance and protect themselves, the less useful those measures were in saving lives and preventing infections. ........ “A fire on your stove you could put out with a fire extinguisher, but if your kitchen is ablaze, that fire extinguisher probably won’t work” ...... They variously assume that each person with the coronavirus would infect either two or three people; that the hospitalization rate would be either 3 percent or 12; and that either 1 percent or a quarter of a percent of people experiencing symptoms would die. ........ Even severe flu seasons stress the nation’s hospitals to the point of setting up tents in parking lots and keeping people for days in emergency rooms. Coronavirus is likely to cause five to 10 times that burden of disease ...... some 96 million people in the United States would be infected. Five out of every hundred would need hospitalization, which would mean close to five million hospital admissions, nearly two million of those patients requiring intensive care and about half of those needing the support of ventilators...... suggested 480,000 deaths, which he said was conservative. By contrast, about 20,000 to 50,000 people have died from flu-related illnesses this season.......

Unlike with seasonal influenza, the entire population is thought to be susceptible to the new coronavirus.

......... an estimate from the attending physician of Congress that the United States could have 70 million to 150 million coronavirus cases. ...... The most lethal pandemic to hit the United States was the 1918 Spanish flu, which was responsible for about 675,000 American deaths ...... the new coronavirus is roughly equally transmissible as the 1918 flu, and just slightly less clinically severe, and it is higher in both transmissibility and severity compared with all other flu viruses in the past century. ....... The world population is about triple the size it was the year before the 1918 flu, with 10 times as many people over 65 and 30 times as many over 85. These groups have proven especially likely to become critically ill and die in the current coronavirus pandemic. ...... Singapore and Hong Kong .... school closures, eliminated mass gatherings, required work from home, and rigorously decontaminated their public transportation and infrastructure. .. widespread testing.



“This feels much worse than 2008”: Obama’s chief economist on coronavirus’s economic threat Coronavirus could do more economic damage than the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession. ........ this feels much worse than 2008. Lehman Brothers was quite bad, but it was the culmination of a sequence of things that had happened over 14 months. This hit all at once....... If two months from now we go back to normal, I think we’d be okay. If this lasts six months or longer — and I think that’s the more likely scenario — all of that just compounds. Even if you discover a cure in December, you still have people out of jobs, broken balance sheets, bankrupt companies that won’t be particularly eager to hire.......

There’s only one equilibrium: It’s economic inactivity until the danger passes.

....... get people cash. .....

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It Was Stupid To Inject 1.5 Trillion Into The Stock Market

But then you fight the war you trained for. That is why Bush went into Iraq. He needed a standing army to tussle with, even though that standing army had nothing to do with 9/11.

And so they injected 1.5 trillion into the stock market. This is the financial Iraq.

The right response would be to give everyone $1,000 a month. For 300 million people that was enough money for five months, perhaps enough to tide over the worst part of the pandemic, although there is no data yet to suggest this virus will get shy during summer.


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