Meanwhile in Stockton…Did we mention San Joaquin County has more cases of COVID-19 than the entire Central Valley and Foothills COMBINED? 👀 pic.twitter.com/S9zvzdYK0Z
— 209 Times (@209TimesCA) March 30, 2020
Wuhan Flu: Heads Up
Whatever you need that can't be found in a grocery store or pharmacy, get it now. Based on the last few days, I don't expect much to be open beyond grocery stores & pharmacies in much of Canada by tomorrow afternoon. #CoronavirusOutbreak #COVIDCanada #coronavirus #coronapocolypse
— Brian Lilley (@brianlilley) March 16, 2020
Update: This just came across the feeds, and it’s gut wrenching if accurate. (It may also explain why the Canadian government did an about face on foreign entry.)
Incredible detail in this FT story: up until last week, the UK was basing its coronavirus control policy on a model based on hospitalisation rates for 😲a different disease😲 with lower rates of intensive care need than coronavirus pic.twitter.com/7rJYh9sqg2
— Tom Hancock (@hancocktom) March 16, 2020
How The COVID-19 Shock Is Different
At Zerohedge.
The COVID-19 crisis has struck the economic ‘machine’ in several places at the same time, as Figure 1 illustrates schematically.
Figure 1 COVID-19’s multiple strikes in the circular flow of income diagram
The figure displays a version of the well-known circular money flow diagram (e.g. Mankiw 2010). In simplified form, households own capital and labour, which they sell to businesses, who use it to make things that households then buy with the money businesses gave them, thereby completing the circuit and keeping the economy ticking over.
Slow Breaking News
The Chinese finally grant permission: Coronavirus confirmed as pandemic by World Health Organization
Related: 77 of 165 Bahrain citizens evacuated from Iran test positive.
I’m sick today (yeah, no) and not much in the mood for sherpa blogging, but here are a few more updates. Things are rolling fast now. Most are links to tweets.
NYC St.Patricks Day Parade cancelled for first time in 285 years.
“Congress’ in-house doctor told Capitol Hill staffers at a close-door meeting this week that he expects 70-150 million people in the U.S. — roughly 1/3 of the country — to contract #COVID19”
Two CBS News employees test positive in New York.
Schools across the US closing.
The US and Europe follow the track set by Italy.
Noooo… Italy 🇮🇹 #COVID19 case count re-accelerating upwards once again. +2300 already halfway thru today. Pray for Italy. Pray for the world.
And here at home… Nearly 160 inmates at the Saskatoon Correctional Centre (SCC) are under quarantine after one offender said he had previously come into contact with someone with COVID-19.
Hope he’s lying. I think I’m done for today.
It’s Probably Nothing
Grab a coffee, it’s worth your while.
Michael Osterholm is an internationally recognized expert in infectious disease epidemiology.
Related: Workers return to the job in China.
Update: I said a week ago Iran is a shitshow.
It’s Probably Nothing
Governments will not be able to minimise both deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the economic impact of viral spread. Keeping mortality as low as possible will be the highest priority for individuals; hence governments must put in place measures to ameliorate the inevitable economic downturn. In our view, COVID-19 has developed into a pandemic, with small chains of transmission in many countries and large chains resulting in extensive spread in a few countries, such as Italy, Iran, South Korea, and Japan.
Most countries are likely to have spread of COVID-19, at least in the early stages, before any mitigation measures have an impact.
Related: To close, or not to close? In short, we face a variant of the old medical adage that in the early stage, diseases are easy to treat but hard to diagnose, while in the later stages they are easy to diagnose but hard to treat.
It’s Probably Nothing
2/ This is the English translation of a post of another ICU physician in Bergamo, Dr. Daniele Macchini. Read until the end "After much thought about whether and what to write about what is happening to us, I felt that silence was not responsible.
— Silvia Stringhini (@silviast9) March 9, 2020
It’s Probably Nothing
A friend in the US writes;
When I heard the first deaths in the US from Covid-19 were at a nursing home, it wasn’t really surprising, even if they were 3,000 miles away from where I work in the Washington DC metro area. I travel to nursing homes throughout the region, have done so for years. The biggest health care trend I’ve seen recently doesn’t have to do with insurance, it has to do with staffing.
Staffing in nursing homes has always been a problem. It’s a struggle for the companies who own them to make what they need to survive, considering the low reimbursement rates from Medicare and Medicaid. Populations are getting older, and living longer with chronic disease primarily caused by lifestyle choices and improved treatments targeting them (and lack of improved health habits, but that’s another subject). As the nursing home population grows, so does the demand for affordable staff. With increasing government regulation and rising costs to treat chronic disease, nursing homes must do more with less money to address the situation.
The nursing home industry has responded by hiring thousands and thousands of Africans, from Ghana, Cameroon, and other African nations as nursing home aides. These workers are trained and transplanted to the US, where their tolerance for hard work and little money has displaced the traditional American health care worker. There has also been a trickle-up, where growing numbers of registered nurses and nurse practitioners are also Africans, displacing native Americans and bringing down salaries in those fields.
What does this have to do with Covid-19? Every day when I am in nursing homes, I overhear staff talking fondly about family, going back to Africa to visit. Many make at least annual treks back to visit, some twice per year. I have also heard talk that they do not believe that Covid-19 can exist in equatorial Africa, so they feel they immune to the disease while there, and they do not believe they can bring it back to America. I’ve talked to them about this, and have yet to convince anyone that infection is possible. They do not talk about the Chinese, who with their Belt and Road Initiative have made substantial inroads into Africa. No one really knows the extent of Covid-19 in the African continent spread by thousands of Chinese workers, but it is ignorant to ignore this route as not significant for viral spread.
It will be interesting to see if the truth ever comes out about how Covid-19 truly got into Seattle-area nursing homes. I believe it’s a matter of time before the virus settles into nursing homes in every large metro area. Just wait and see.
Dead Country Walking
Hey, why not?
h/t rd, who adds;
Markets really hate uncertainty, and this Coronavirus is the motherblinker of all uncertainties. Expect the stock market to get hammered, and people to move into bonds, driving down yields even more.
Just wait until Coronavirus comes to your town, and everyone stays home in quarantine. Watch the restaurant, fast food, and service businesses all close for a few weeks. No one will be collecting a paycheck, and lots of owners are just going to be desperate to stay afloat. It will be a huge sh–show.
Don’t believe me, look at Italy.
Plus, this.
Saudi had led the charge to cut production. But this time, Russia wasn’t having it. And now the Saudis have announced big discounts on their crude, particularly the stuff they sell to the US. It’s essentially a declaration of war on US producers. Expect gas prices to plummet
— Gregory Brew (@gbrew24) March 8, 2020
Morning update: Markets opened down 7% and hit the circuit breakers immediately. TSX down 1800 pts at opening.
TSX drops another 200 points when trading resumes after automatic 15-minute shutdown. Losses top 1,600 since opening bell (9.7%).
— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) March 9, 2020
It’s Probably Nothing
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Sunday that he shook hands with a man now confirmed to be infected with the novel form of coronavirus during a recent interaction at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
In a news release Sunday evening, Cruz said that based on medical advice he had received, he did not believe there was any current risk of him developing the disease, which has already infected more than 100,000 people globally.
“Last night, I was informed that 10 days ago at CPAC I briefly interacted with an individual who is currently symptomatic and has tested positive for COVID-19. That interaction consisted of a brief conversation and a handshake,” Cruz said.
GOP Rep. Paul Gosar (Arizona) has also self-quarantined. While the name of the infected participant hasn’t been released officially, it’s started to circulate that it’s a Dr. Alan Berger, a Jewish dentist who was involved in the Cruz campaign in 2016. He’s been hospitalized.
More here from Raheem Kassam, co host of Steve Bannon’s @WarRoom2020 podcast.. He’s not happy.
It’s Probably Nothing
America just held a nationwide IQ test. Did you notice it?
Everyone who has said about coronavirus that, “It’s just the flu,” failed the IQ test. As did those who claim discussing coronavirus is “spreading panic.”
They are engaging in what Scott Adams calls Loserthink.[…]
You will almost certainly not die from the coronavirus.
If the coronavirus contagion and death rates are accurate, between one and three million Americans could die.
When you have a low risk of a pandemic with a death count exceeding the total number of Americans who died in World War II, you take precautions.
Reasonable minds can differ as to what those precautions are.
But if you’re not thinking about coronavirus in terms of fat tail risk, you’re not even allowed to be part of the conversation.
There Are No Vegans In Foxholes
True story.#coronavirus #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/rr9BSszwZn
— Darren of Plymouth 🇬🇧 (@DarrenPlymouth) March 6, 2020
It’s Probably Nothing
Former Iranian ambassador to Syria and a hostage-taker of U.S. diplomats, Hossein Sheikholeslam, died Thursday from a Covid19 infection, local news outlets report.
An advisor to the Islamic Republic Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, 68-year-old Sheikholeslam was one of the leaders of the so-called “Muslim Student Followers of Imam’s Line,” who took 52 U.S. diplomats hostage, on November 4, 1979, and released them after 444 days.
It’s Probably Nothing
“While the rest of us were arguing about sexism and transgender bathrooms, China was taking control of our health care system”
The Great Decoupling is about to begin.
Updated with this bit of good news — The science behind COVID-19 is now free to access for everyone in the world – every scientist – every healthcare professional, all because of your incredible support. In the previous weeks publishers faced the choice between protecting the value of their intellectual property and protecting humanity during this incredibly urgent medical crisis.
It’s Probably Nothing
18/ Lombardy's welfare minister: "every day we get 200 new people to the ER in critical conditions, which means every day we need to find 200 more hospital beds. […] the virus is spreading at an exceptional speed, faster than our predictions and than the data we got from China." pic.twitter.com/yge69JU2cK
— Luca Dellanna (@DellAnnaLuca) March 6, 2020
I have a friend in Italy undergoing cancer treatment that’s unavailable here. From a Facebook post earlier today;
“Yeah, I’m not trying to spread hysteria here but I’m in Italy so I’m seeing this first hand. I was booked to have an operation yesterday for my cancer, it was booked months in advance. I went in, saw the tents outside of the hospital for coronavirus patients, went to meet one of my doctors and she took me to the oncology department which was also the very last ward not being used for coronavirus patients. I wait for 7 hours, then am told that they will not be preforming the surgery this week and they are unsure when they will have any time or space for me.
Too long didnt read? They shut down the fourth building of the hospital of oncology to make beds for coronavirus patients while a doctor in tears told me I would not be getting the life extending operation I booked.
Not trying to be melodramatic but honestly a little sick of people posting memes and telling themselves its nothing to be afraid of. It is effectively capable of shutting down the healthcare systems. Be prepared, especially my American friends.”
And therein lies the biggest risk — it’s not “just the flu”. Health care workers can be vaccinated for the flu. When a high percentage of the people taking care of patients become infected just as the demand on the system surges? See above.
Meanwhile in DiverstyStrongistan… Over weeks of daily crossings, this is the first time 🇨🇦 agents asked health questions.
It’s Probably Nothing
Most of our data has been supplied by unreliable China and Iran. What is the case fatality rate elsewhere?
It’s Probably Nothing
The word is “admitted”. Chinese controlled WHO says…coronavirus death rate is 3.4% globally, higher than previously thought.
It’s Probably Nothing
Diversity is our strength! Travellers from Iran report NO SCREENING at Toronto’s Pearson Airport
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
Related: Coronavirus takes out aide to Iran’s “supreme leader”
Still, probably nothing.
(And this, I don’t even know what this means.)
It’s Probably Nothing
It’s challenging to verify information coming out of authoritarian regimes like Iran.
But Ali’s account dates to 2009, he seems like a real engineer, and he links to a number of sources.
His account is sobering and worth investigating. If even partially true, it’s concerning. https://t.co/T2UGlfFgAs
— Balaji S. Srinivasan (@balajis) February 29, 2020
Related: #China’s factories activity plunges, worse than global financial crisis in 2008/9.
Australia has banned travel from Iran.