Tuesday, March 3, 2020

COVID-19 # 20 (Required Parts are Highlighted)

It's been a problem to get to the Johns Hopkins dashboard and/or find its deep URL. They've now set up a website with more general information, and a direct link to the dashboard on the left.

The big news Tuesday is that the Federal Reserve — in an emergency move — cut its target rate by half a point. That's a fairly big move: quarter point moves are common. While they changed the way they set targets a bit in late 2008, there has not been a half-point change since late October 2008. That had followed an "emergency" rate cut, also of half a point, made 3 weeks earlier. Emergency might be too strong a word. Basically, what they did is decide to change interest rates through a conference call, rather than waiting for the next scheduled FOMC meeting (this year, that's in 2 weeks).

This is fairly similar to what we did in class, although I simulated a single value and they simulated a distribution.

Laurie Garrett reports that Saudi Arabia has suspended all pilgrimages to Mecca. This is for the more minor pilgrimmages known as Umrah that can take place at any time, not the main one (Hajj) which must be undertaken at a specific time (late July this year).

Two cases have cropped up in EU government offices in Brussels. Also, the European Central Bank has banned all executive travel through April 20th.

The Washington Post reported this morning that Italy is closing all schools and universities for 2 weeks. There are rumours they will be closing cinemas, theaters, and banning public events. (In China, the schools have been closed for 6+ weeks now).

Members of a Jewish temple in suburban New York have been quarantined after exposure. Infected person rode the train to services too. Also in New York we've got a report of transmission within an entire family; the WHO now states that this was the big problem in Wuhan.

The situation in Iran continues to get weirder, and is now easily a danger to the rest of the world. Internal reporting from the BBC suggests that deaths are 6 times higher than what has been reported. And, Iran has refused aid from the U.S. (yes, I get the whole great satan mantra they use, but apparently they think that extends to things like medical aid). It is also worth noting that scholars studying the intersection of Iran's politics and Shiite eschatology have been warning about instability for some time. Polite people don't like to discuss these things, but maybe they should.

First, and remember that all reports from everywhere are always looking backwards a day or two, roughly 10% of their parliament has tested positive. This is in addition to the list of government officials I wrote up on Monday. Even weirder (hat tip to TL), there was a video clip shown on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday in which an Iranian argued that the public is so distrustful of the government that they think they are scamming somehow; like they're going to announce Allah miraculously cured everyone (do keep in mind that is a comedy show, but the clip appears to be real). Here's a link to the entire show (NSFW), the clip that concerns me starts at the 9:20 mark:


Second, they've taken the unusual (and a bit bizarre) step of furloughing all prisoners who "test negative". This is weird, because they probably don't have enough tests for 54K prisoners (for example, it was a great success for richer and better prepared South Korea to run 18K tests yesterday). On other hand, China has had problems with the infection spreading readily within institutions like prisons, so it makes sense that Iran would have the same problem. But what sense would it make to release prisoners from a heavily exposed population into the more lightly exposed general population? One thought is that this may be a way to keep civil unrest under control: make everyone afraid to go out and talk to strangers for fear of the disease.

This was bound to happen, but it still feels weird. Global Times reports that China is chartering flights to get Chinese nationals out of Iran. CaixingGlobal also reports that China has now imported cases from travelers returning from Italy.

Fantastic article with great graphics entitled "The Korean Clusters" on the evolution of disease clusters in South Korea. The first 30 diagnoses were going according to plan, until Patient 31 left the hospital, attended two church services and buffet lunch at a hotel ... and came in contact with 1,160 people. Given the way Americans often think, I could totally see this happening here.

The U.S. continues to dawdle with widespread testing. The South Koreans are actually doing it.

Fortunately, they don't seem to be finding too many positives. This suggests that while South Korea was dealt a bad hand with that church, their healthcare system is ramping up effectively and may be able to get their situation under control.

Oh ... and by the way ... I'm not sure exactly what South Korean officials said in private about proposed murder charges, but you don't often see an old guy who thinks he's closer to god than anyone else apologizing and then kowtowing on live TV.

Much of the quarantine in China is not official, but rather people just staying home. This is starting to happen in the U.S.:
New research has pushed back the evolution of the virus into its current virulent form to the first half of November.

The WHO report on the outbreak shows a number of things. On page 4, the SARS-CoV-2 is shown to be fairly close to the SARS virus from 2002-3, and more distantly related to the MERS virus. On  page 4 it shows that the outbreak was not just worse in Wuhan, but that cases in Wuhan exceeded those in the rest of Hubei, and even in the rest of China. On page 13, high rates of mortality were mostly in Wuhan (where the healthcare system was most overloaded), and had fallen there to levels comparable in other regions by February 10th. Throughout the document, it is emphasized that the main source of infection (even amongst healthcare workers) appears to be their own families: in short, if one person is sick, everyone should stay home.

Sort of a PSA since we need to worry more now. The most unique symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 are a fever with a dry cough, and perhaps shortness of breath. Runny or stuffy nose is probably a regular cold. With body aches, and its probably the flu.

The Epoch Times (not supporters of the current regime in China) have produced documents indicating that provincial governments in Liaoning and Shandong directed local officials to destroy data related to the outbreak.

 The first official macroeconomic data from China is out, and it's horrifying:
A Chinese government index that tracks sentiment among purchasing managers at manufacturers fell to its lowest level on record in February, dropping deep into territory that indicates a contraction. China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Saturday that its 15-year-old index tumbled to 35.7 from 50.0 in January—below even the lowest level recorded during the global financial crisis.
A related index that tracks purchasing plans in services industries plunged to a record low of 29.6—deep below the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction
Meanwhile, a private measure of national economic activity also dropped hugely:
The Caixin China manufacturing purchasing managers index’s 40.3 reading in February was the lowest since the survey began in April 2004, Caixin Media Co. and research firm Markit said Monday. It was down from 51.1 in January and well below the 50 mark that separates expansion in activity from contraction.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)