The Coronavirus Crunch of February 2020

In late mid February, Covid-19 spread outside of China and has climbed very fast in Iran, Italy and South Korea.

• New epicenter in Europe: Italy
• New epicenter in Middle East: Iran
• New epicenter in South-East Asia: South Korea

Today it’s 24th of February where the Dow Jones is down around 900 points as of 11:00 am.

According to Reuters, the WHO doesn’t even use a “Pandemic” category anymore, amid praises for China and how this hasn’t reached those levels yet. Something isn’t right in how the world is preparing for the impact of this new coronavirus. And, why doesn’t it impact infants?

If 80% of cases are mild, why do teens and young adults spread the virus to the rest of the population so well, and perhaps commonly, without showing any external symptoms?

Researchers in the field estimate we’ve missed around two thirds of cases as they spread to other countries.

The Centres for Disease Control (CDC) announced on Saturday it was initiating preparations for a “likely” spread of Covid-19 in the United States. Today the stock market is catching up with old news and headlines that should soon impact the U.S. directly with community transmission.

The exponential rate of deaths and cases in Iran, Italy and South Korea demonstrate a wave of infections that will likely be a global event of considerable impact. SMEs and small businesses begin to go bankcrupt which leads to higher unemployment which we are seeing now in China, around 6 weeks ahead of the rest of the world on this.

This is mainly due to Government copying China’s “draconian” approach of containment, which does not work. This scares consumers into not going out and certainly not spending.

In fact the WHO have very little to say that we don’t already know. Their lack of objectivity with regards to the coronavirus in China is deeply concerning for the future of data transparency in general. The mainstream media (MSM) all over the world just echoes their messages. Does anyone else feel something wrong about that?

The relative sensitivity of international surveillance of covid-19 is pretty poor. Governments are more afraid of the panic than the actual virus. This is leading to a grave under estimation of the actual impact of the virus economically, like others have mentioned.

• South Korea confirmed 231 new cases on Monday, bringing the total there to more than 830.
• Exponential increase in Iran and Italy show that the 66% of cases we’ve missed travelling from China will create new pockets of local transmission.

The spike in deaths in Iran shows just how severe the situation will become, with Iraq reporting its first case as well.

Containment of Covid-19 Was Never Realistic

With outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, and Beijing itself witnessing new clusters, it’s obvious the pandemic can’t be prevented via human intervention.

Once the virus spreads “in the community” this way, like flu, containment becomes impossible. That is the “window” Tedros fears is closing. That many young people are infected but show no symptoms means it’s also furthermore, impossible to contain.

In a world where the World Health Organization feels like a PR Agency, we have to assume Chinese figures on the coronavirus are highly manipulated. However the CDC’s approach to prevention is also irrational with the world practising travel bans, which isolate economies and break supply chains in critical phases when medial supplies are key.

The over-reaction to the virus means economic misery is ahead for the most vulnerable countries.

Covid-19 has reached well over 30 countries at the time of the writing. This may not be the beginning of a bear market, but will show severe impacts to SMEs globally that will impact global GDP in ways that we haven’t seen in decades.

As containment fails, the world enters the “mitigation” phase of epidemic response, with quarantine replaced by actions such as closing schools, cancelling mass gatherings and similar “social distancing” measures. These reactions escalate panic in an epidemic situation. But this is a pandemic, those reactions are not appropriate.

Exponential infections globally will occur in March, 2020 and the world will take months to recover. A 3% decline of the stock market is not the end of the world, but in epicenter region mortality rates should be well over 4% as healthcare systems become overwhelmed.