COVID-19 and Lockdowns in Hong Kong and China

Oh yeah ... COVID-19 didn't go away. We just gave up. Maybe it's even on the way back in the U.S. Won't that be fun.

Hong Kong is currently experiencing the highest death rate of any region ... ever. It's approximately 3 times the rate for the U.S. at our worst (in January '21, before they even started coming up with Greek letter names, when that was known as the third wave). 

This is macroeconomically important because Hong Kong ... by itself (!!!) ... is in the 80's for its percentile of countries around the world as ranked by GDP — comparable to Nigeria, Denmark, Israel, Colombia, or South Africa.

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China used the world's inattention during the first 9 months of COVID-19 to seriously take over the political and social system in Hong Kong.

So this is happening in spite of China's zero tolerance policy towards infections.

Instead, the problem appears to be that China has its own vaccine, but hasn't been that great at vaccinating a big proportion of their population. Macroeconomically, self-sufficiency is not a great thing.

This breakout has spread to Shenzen (badly), and Shanghai (somewhat). These are the 3rd biggest, and biggest cities in China. Shenzen is locked down.

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I am not a great believer in the position of the Biden White House that current inflation is due to supply chain problems which are due to COVID-19 issues. It's a factor, I just don't think it's the big one.

Shutting down Shenzen is going to make this a much bigger factor for the U.S. through summer.