Friday, March 6, 2020

COVID-19 # 21 (Required Parts are Highlighted)

It's started.
This came out just after 9 this morning. This is the intention:
CS sent in this piece. It was written by a resident of Wuhan, and published anonymously by NPR. It argues forcefully that the outbreak would never have turned into an epidemic if China did not have systems in place to suppress information. Then there's this:
If things are getting better in China:
Why is that the new policy? Also note that there have now been more deaths in Seattle than in Beijing.

On the other hand, China uses a 5 level risk system for provinces. Eleven provinces have moved to the lowest level, and 20 were downgraded today. On January 29th, the entire country was at the highest level.

  Take a look at these graphs, and pay attention to the type of scale on the vertical axis:
 Getting flatter is good. But, having said that, most of the continent seems to be mimicking Italy.

 Understanding the U.S. system may be helpful going forward. The CDC is a federal government agency, but is only allowed to do things set aside for the federal government. Everything else is at the state level:

OPEC and related countries had a conference in Vienna to discuss reducing production. Recall from my earlier post that most oil is not stored, making prices very elastic. Those talks broke down and disbanded with no agreement. In response, the price of crude oil as plummeted. WTI (a grade of crude found all over the world, but named after west Texas) is off  9% so far today (lots of charts at in this post from Zero Hedge). The problem here — from OPEC's perspective — is that many members are so dependent on the revenue brought in from oil sales, that when prices drop they respond perversely by increasing production.

Every state in Europe, except Slovakia, has now reported infections.

Singapore has a fantastic health system. They were one of the first countries hit. They have kept their outbreak under control. Unfortunately, they recorded 13 new cases today, their largest daily increase so far, and biggest in about a month.

Schools are closed in Japan. So this is good news:
Do note that these provinces are not that close to Hubei. But, also, for the portions of Hubei outside of Wuhan, zero new cases were reported on Friday.

On the other hand, incentive problems in China always lead to data problems:
Here's a forecast that's not pretty. An Iranian official, Dr. Massoud Mardani, a member of Iran's National Influenza Committee, predicts around 4 million people may be infected in Tehran within 2 weeks. That's consistent with there being several hundred thousand cases right now. Officially, Iran admits to about 5K. It is not believed that Iran has many tests available to pin down those numbers.

 Trump has signed the emergency spending bill for $8.3B pushed through Congress yesterday. Do note this is about 3 times what he asked for. Also note, that there is zero reason Congress could not have done this earlier.

 Not much news out of Iran, other than another top government official has died. No news is probably not good.

And in local-ish news:

Jake Miller recommended these two pieces from McKinsey ("... Implications for Business" and "... Facts and Insights").
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