Credit deflation and the reflation cycle to come (part 2)

[leonardratso]

this guy to be censored and shot v.soon.

[Democorruptcy]

Amerman's coronavirus effect on markets/US debt etc

http://danielamerman.com/va/ccc/G3CoronaPersp.html

 

[leonardratso]

just got an email saying the canteen at work is closing for covid-19 reasons, the muck they shovel out its probably the initial cause of the outbreak to be honest. Should have closed years ago, the dirty bastards.

[JMD]

8 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Possibly the best holistic take on the current crisis and the conclusion that the politcal elite focusing on corona virus in isolation will prove to the detriment of society more widely is hard to argue with.

I'm not saying A&E staff aren't getting smashed because they are but what I am saying is that the economic shutdown could well affect a lot more people than the corona virus.

hattip Andrew Neil twitter feed.

https://spectator.us/consider-costs-coronavirus/

Less than 24 hours after California governor Gavin Newsom closed ‘non-essential’ businesses and ordered Californians to stay inside to avoid spreading the coronavirus, New York governor Andrew Cuomo followed suit. ‘This is about saving lives,’ Cuomo said during a press conference on Friday. ‘If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.’

Cuomo’s assertion that saving ‘just one life’ justifies an economic shutdown raises questions that have not been acknowledged, much less answered, as public officials across the country compete to impose ever more draconian anti-virus measures:

• Is there any limit to the damage we are willing inflict on the world economy to mitigate the infection?
• What are the benefits of each new commerce-killing measure and how do they compare to the costs?
• What are the criteria for declaring success in the coronavirus fight and who decides whether they have been met?

To ask about the costs and benefits of the spreading economic shutdowns guarantees an accusation of heartlessness. But the issue is not human compassion versus alleged greed. The issue is balancing one target of compassion against another. The millions of people whose lives depend on a functioning economy also deserve compassion. Many of the businesses that are now being shuttered by decree will never come back. They do not have the reserves to survive weeks or months without customers. In New York City, many streets were already blighted by rows of empty storefronts. The virus shutdown could knock out the remaining enterprises, as customers acclimate themselves further to ordering on-line. Layoffs are piling up in restaurants, hotels, and malls; on Tuesday, unemployment claims in California were 40 times above the daily average, an increase greater than any coronavirus surge.

It is low-wage employees who are most being hurt. The knowledge class can shelter in place and work from their home computers. Their employers are not shutting down. Not so people who physically provide goods and services. The employees who have been let off now may not be able to find work again if the economy continues to collapse. While governors and mayors declare some businesses essential and some not, to their employees, they are all essential.

A prolonged depression will stunt lives as surely as any viral epidemic, and its toll will not be confined to the elderly. The shuttering of auto manufacturing plants led to an 85 percent increase in opioid overdose deaths in the surrounding counties over seven years, according to a recent study. Radical social upheaval is possible.

The arts world is being decimated. For the last two years the New York Times and other left-wing newspapers have been bashing the boards of major cultural institutions for being too white and too male. Those institutions had better hope that their ‘non-diverse’ trustees feel flush enough after the $5 trillion loss in the stock market to bail them out.

While the coming explosion of deficit spending — possibly $2 trillion worth — may be necessary to keep people afloat, government cannot possibly replicate the wealth-creating effects of voluntary commerce. The enormously complex web of trade, once killed, cannot be brought back to life by government stimulus. And who is going to pay for all that deficit spending as businesses close and tax revenues disappear?

Pace Cuomo, it is not the case that saving even one life justifies any and every policy. Decision-making is always about trade-offs. About 16,000 Americans are murdered each year. That number could be radically lowered by locking up known gangbangers and throwing away the key. The left in America, however, is on a crusade to empty the prisons and stop enforcing a host of criminal laws. Some of the de-incarcerated and decriminalized will go on to maim and murder. An influential criminologist once acknowledged to me that lowering prison sentences in order to end so-called mass incarceration would inevitably mean that ‘some guy will throw a little old lady off the roof’. The answer is not to back off of de-incarceration, he said, it is to explain that the community in the aggregate is safer with resources diverted into social programs instead of incarceration. That is a perfectly defensible line of argument, regardless of whether one agrees with the particulars in this case.

Around 40,000 Americans die each year in traffic deaths. We could save not just one life but tens of thousands by lowering the speed limit to 25 miles per hour on all highways and roads. We tolerate the highway carnage because we value the time saved from driving fast more. Another estimated 40,000 Americans have died from the flu this flu season. Social distancing policies would have reduced that toll as well, but until now we have preferred freedom of association and movement.

So it is worth reviewing what we know and don’t know about the coronavirus epidemic to assess the benefits and costs of the growing policies. The rising number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 is undoubtedly a function to a considerable extent of increased testing. We don’t know its transmission rate. We don’t know how much shutting down restaurants and air travel lowers that transmission rate. We still have no idea what the virus fatality rate is, since we don’t know how many people in the general population are infected. Early fatality estimates were undoubtedly too high, since they were derived from a small denominator composed of already identified, severe cases.

The only situation to date where an entire, closed population was tested was the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship, as Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis observed last week. Among seven hundred passengers and crew members, seven died, for a 1 percent mortality rate — low given the close and prolonged exposure among the passengers. A cruise ship’s population is much more elderly than the general population and thus more vulnerable to disease. Ioannidis suggests that a reasonable fatality estimate for the US population as a whole could range from 0.05 percent to 1 percent; he settles for 0.3 percent. If 1 percent of the US population becomes infected, under a 0.3 percent fatality rate, 10,000 people would die, a number that would not move the needle much on the existing level of deaths due to various types of influenzas, Ioannidis notes.

Those fatalities would be highly concentrated among the elderly and the already severely sick. In Italy, as of March 17, there were 17 virus deaths under the age of 50, out of a little over 2,000 total deaths. Eighty-eight percent of those deaths were concentrated in just two adjacent regions — Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna — out of 20 regions, rather than being spread throughout the country. Five males between the ages of 31 and 39 had died, all had serious preexisting conditions including cardiovascular and renal disease, diabetes, and obesity. The fatality rate for those under 30 was zero. The median age of Italy’s COVID-19 decedents was 80.5. They had a median of 2.7 pre-existing health conditions: 33 percent had coronary artery disease, 76 percent suffered from hypertension, 35 percent were diabetic, and 20 percent had had cancer in the last five years. Just 3 decedents had no pre-existing conditions.

Italy’s demographics are different from our own — it is an older population with a high concentration of Chinese workers, especially in the north. On February 1, the mayor of Florence called on Italians to hug a Chinese person to fight virus-induced racism. According to a propaganda video put out by the Chinese government, many Italians complied. Nevertheless, American virus deaths so far mirror the pattern of Italy: geographically clustered in three states and concentrated among the elderly or those with serious chronic medical conditions. In South Korea, too, deaths have hit the elderly, whereas as many as 99 percent of all infections have been mild.

Nevertheless, government authorities at the federal, state, and local levels are seizing powers unheard of in peace or even wartime. Many on the left want an even greater assumption of power. Michael Dorf, a Cornell University law professor, has urged the suspension of habeas corpus, to eliminate the possibility of a legal challenge to a national lockdown. It’s hard to avoid the impression that some see the current moment as a warm-up for their wish-list of sweeping economic interventions.

The New York Times has touted the benefits of social distancing and curtailed commerce for global warming and air pollution. ‘Never waste even a tragic crisis,’ the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at University of Minnesota told the Times with reference to global warming policy. (This is the same sage, Dr Michael Osterholm, who early on criticized President Trump’s prescient travel ban from China as more of an emotional or political reaction than a sound public health one.) European leftists are noting with delight that large-scale state intrusion into the economy is being normalized. Times columnist Farhad Manjoo gloated that ‘everyone’s a socialist in a pandemic’. Actually, we had better hope that everyone’s a capitalist, since it is the extraordinary flexibility and fecundity of America’s private businesses that are continuing to restock grocery shelves after the panicked hordes strip them bare. It is private businesses that are retooling themselves to produce much-needed medical equipment.

The press is working overtime to ensure maximum hysteria. The New York Times outdid itself on Saturday, following a weeklong run of terrifying front-page banner headlines. A blood red map of the US above the fold purported to show infections by July 1 if no restrictions were imposed on public life — a completely counterfactual projection, since numerous restrictions have already been imposed and more are being added daily. The headlines above the fold contained the usual blend of Trump-bashing and fear-mongering: ‘PRESSURE ON TRUMP AS MILLIONS ARE KEPT HOME’, ‘Mixed Signals From President Sow Confusion’, and ‘Virus Tightens Grip on Nation’. This at a time of 214 deaths and 17,000 infected, compared to the 36 to 51 million infected by the flu this season, and the 140 to 350 flu deaths a day.

‘America plunged into a deeper state of disruption and paralysis on Friday,’ opened the lead story. But that disruption and paralysis were man-made, caused by the stay at home orders, not by the actual medical consequences of the pandemic. It was not the virus that was tightening its grip on the nation, it was policy and fear.

To be sure, we are facing a daunting public health challenge. Thousands will die; every death will be a harrowing loss for the victim’s family. Our medical personnel are already being severely taxed; they deserve proper equipment and facilities. The government is right to coordinate and boost the effort to supply them with desperately needed protective gear. But the rush to impose sweeping restrictions on public and commercial life across the entire economy should be more carefully evaluated. We have no ability to test the efficacy of those measures and no criteria for lifting them. The downside risk to their being over-inclusive could well outweigh the upside risk.

Moreover, a certain percentage of social distancing is virtue theater. While the elites stay at home and carefully maintain their cordons sanitaires, they expect their food and other necessities to magically materialize from a vast and complex supply chain whose degree of social distancing is out of sight and out of mind.

We should focus our efforts on our known vulnerable populations — the elderly, the infirm, and those who care for them. The elderly should be protected from unknown contacts. Nursing homes must be immaculately maintained. But until there is clear evidence that canceling commerce is essential to preventing mass casualties, the stampede of shutdown oneupmanship should end

Interesting that Northern Italy has a big Chinese population... after all our MSM has been puzzling over why there was such a virus spike in that region, once again journalists refuse to join the dots on the simplest of assignments... another nail in the MSM coffin I hope.    

It is very concerning that the policy initiatives being imposed all around the world seem to have more to do with enacting moral decisions, rather than pure health/medical decision making. e.g. 'If one life is saved...', etc. Discrimination (not always 'evil' - i.e. an understanding of difference) is not allowed, instead we have virtue signalling on steroids by our leaders.     

[leonardratso]

i remember reading an article when the people were blockading refineries etc about the price of petrol etc,  and the petrol stations slowly bit surely ran dry, there was one station somewhere darn sarf that had petrol still and the owner/manager hoisted the price way up to gouge and profiteer. People paid it just to get it, then when it all blew over the same people remembered the price gouger and promptly bankrupted it by not going back to it. Im hoping that the MSM gets some of that action when this all blows over, like boris and the So-Called BBC holding a grudge and destroying them afterwards.

 

[Barnsey]

Not one post about what we heard an hour ago? What can we say really? Crazy times!

[Errol]

3 of the 4 major gold refineries in Switzerland have now suspended production.

 

[leonardratso]

makes me think, if id  gone to bed early and got up early and as usual didnt watch shit tv or listen to the shit radio, then id wake up oblivious and go about my usual day and go to work, and id be breaking the communist law.

[Barnsey]

https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/job-retention-scheme-could-create-resentment-among-staff-still-working
 

However, Seath warned that employers could face some issues with the scheme, including resentment from staff who are asked to continue working but who might have preferred to be among those given time off at a reduced rate of pay.

He also questioned whether there would be “sufficient controls in place to ensure that employers do not claim to have furloughed staff, and so claim the wages, when in fact those staff continue working”.

[BadAlchemy]

7 minutes ago, Barnsey said:

Not one post about what we heard an hour ago? What can we say really? Crazy times!

From the governbankment website...

• Only go outside for food, health reasons or essential work

What is essential work? Many more occupations than you might think.... unless we are just going to let our infrastructure and way of life crumble around us. A price worth paying or is the cure becoming worse than the virus itself?

[Barnsey]

3 minutes ago, leonardratso said:

makes me think, if id  gone to bed early and got up early and as usual didnt watch shit tv or listen to the shit radio, then id wake up oblivious and go about my usual day and go to work, and id be breaking the communist law.

Apparently we’re all getting a text tonight

Just now, Cattle Prod said:

I like that he left the parks open to exercise, I think that was specifically to accommodate dogs! British people are nuts about their dogs, I think there would have been riots otherwise!

I've gotten my marching orders to get home within 48 hrs, so I leave my icy quarantine. I'll let you all know what the journey is like.

I’m sure it’s safe to say on behalf of us all here that we wish you a swift trouble free journey CP

[Errol]

3 minutes ago, Barnsey said:

Apparently we’re all getting a text tonight

Text? I have never sent one. My phone is off the whole time (and in the fridge).

[leonardratso]

will this text be from the nigerian prince again wanting to send me $25M ?

makes me think, if id  gone to bed early and got up early and as usual didnt watch shit tv or listen to the shit radio, then id wake up oblivious and go about my usual day and go to work, and id be breaking the communist law.

and i didnt have a mobile phone.

[DurhamBorn]

Should of been done a week ago,but at least done now markets will be able to start to price better once they can see an end,up until now its been endless.The big question now is they need to keep injecting liquidity into the system,they simply cant afford a credit collapse.Among the carnage a lot of stocks that like inflation held up today.There might be bigger falls in them yet,but they are now rubber bands waiting to explode.

The key point now is all this printing is going in,but very little coming out.Thats storing up massive inflation.It wont happen at first because it wont move around,but once it does we might get a quite steep inflation.

Whats interesting is the the way this deflation came about saw almost all sectors hit.That could signal the inflation will be more broad when it arrives.

I was looking at my oil road map for the bust and it said $15 possible.Im quite amazed that we saw $20 and might see it yet.I expected a bounce first from the $40s area that didnt arrive,we went straight down.There is a big risk it under shoots to even $10,but hopefully not.Next stop after the turn $200 to $300+ a slow build and parabolic towards the end of the cycle.

Everything is turning,inflection points are reached,massive financial dislocation as expected and we are going all the way back to 1983.lets hope this thread charts it and calls it all the way.

 

 

 

30 minutes ago, Cattle Prod said:

I like that he left the parks open to exercise, I think that was specifically to accommodate dogs! British people are nuts about their dogs, I think there would have been riots otherwise!

I've gotten my marching orders to get home within 48 hrs, so I leave my icy quarantine. I'll let you all know what the journey is like.

Safe journey your input to this thread is invaluable.

[MrXxxx]

13 hours ago, sancho panza said:

Society could accuse my mother of selfishness and arrest her for venturing out(she's over 70) but she'd just go to prison.I've tried and tried to get her to stay in but she just won't.

Good for her, we need more like this, and less of these bloody sheep we call `society` who seem to be `swallowing` all this bullsh@t!

[MrXxxx]

13 hours ago, sancho panza said:

terms of investment strategy,I think steering towrds the decomplex trades has to be the way to go,and by that I mean deeply decomplex

SP can you explain what decomplex trades are...did a quick Google and couldn't find anything...I was OK when you were talking epidemiology, as soon as you reverted to finance I was lost! :-)

[MrXxxx]

12 hours ago, Yellow_Reduced_Sticker said:

Buses? The Go-Ahead Group ...Rocketing UP ...14% today to: £7.37 ...last week low of £3.90!

WISH i bought MORE at the LOW

EDIT: Covered by Barnsey.

[leonardratso]

how about the tank?

[sancho panza]

13 hours ago, Castlevania said:

I don’t think Italians being very touchy feely when greeting each other has helped.

 

9 hours ago, Harley said:

What does that look like?

 

Oil/Gas Producers,PM miners,Potash,Copper,Tobacco,Uranium,Rare earths,probably in that order.Just my view.

8 hours ago, Cattle Prod said:

Thank god for that! I'm still stuck overseas, closely watching for BA to pull the plug on me...

Good luck CP,hope you get home.

2 hours ago, Barnsey said:

Not one post about what we heard an hour ago? What can we say really? Crazy times!

It won't make an ounce of difference to what I do with the kids tomorrow.Sad thing is that Boris has come up with his plan but he's clearly never called for police help on a friday night in Leicestershire.Reliable rumours put the number of on duty police at around the 35 level even for a friday night.His plan is unenforceable in the middle class suburbs,let alone the inner cities or the rural areas.

Police have better things to do than nicking my 75 year old mother for going to WIlko to buy cider vinegar,like stopping people stabbing each other.

[sancho panza]

1 hour ago, DurhamBorn said:

Should of been done a week ago,but at least done now markets will be able to start to price better once they can see an end,up until now its been endless.The big question now is they need to keep injecting liquidity into the system,they simply cant afford a credit collapse.Among the carnage a lot of stocks that like inflation held up today.There might be bigger falls in them yet,but they are now rubber bands waiting to explode.

The key point now is all this printing is going in,but very little coming out.Thats storing up massive inflation.It wont happen at first because it wont move around,but once it does we might get a quite steep inflation.

Whats interesting is the the way this deflation came about saw almost all sectors hit.That could signal the inflation will be more broad when it arrives.

I was looking at my oil road map for the bust and it said $15 possible.Im quite amazed that we saw $20 and might see it yet.I expected a bounce first from the $40s area that didnt arrive,we went straight down.There is a big risk it under shoots to even $10,but hopefully not.Next stop after the turn $200 to $300+ a slow build and parabolic towards the end of the cycle.

Everything is turning,inflection points are reached,massive financial dislocation as expected and we are going all the way back to 1983.lets hope this thread charts it and calls it all the way.

 

Interesting to see that as sterling tanked today,BP and Shell went up,we're debating our buying strategy once we feel the bottom is in.XOM is $31 but I'm unwilling to buy with cable so low.Shame.Was pndering a final tranche in SIbnaye but again held off for the same reason.

Intention now is to funnel our remaining stake for this phase(we're keeping about 16% in cash) into BP/Shell and possibly some more

21 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

SP can you explain what decomplex trades are...did a quick Google and couldn't find anything...I was OK when you were talking epidemiology, as soon as you reverted to finance I was lost! :-)

All explained by this writer @Democorruptcy introduced.In short,complex is sifting the transports for the best picks,decomplex is buying the oilies who produce the oil they run on.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2020/03/11/167-tests-and-correctives/

[sancho panza]

38 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

Good for her, we need more like this, and less of these bloody sheep we call `society` who seem to be `swallowing` all this bullsh@t!

This one is the click through from that previous article I posted.Written by a Professor of Epidemiology/Medicine.Citing exactly the same problems with the data we've identified on here

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.

At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact.

Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates — either on its own or because of these measures — short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm?

Vaccines or affordable treatments take many months (or even years) to develop and test properly. Given such timelines, the consequences of long-term lockdowns are entirely unknown.

Related:

We know enough now to act decisively against Covid-19. Social distancing is a good place to start

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population.

 

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately those with severe symptoms and bad outcomes. As most health systems have limited testing capacity, selection bias may even worsen in the near future.

The one situation where an entire, closed population was tested was the Diamond Princess cruise ship and its quarantine passengers. The case fatality rate there was 1.0%, but this was a largely elderly population, in which the death rate from Covid-19 is much higher.

Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%). It is also possible that some of the passengers who were infected might die later, and that tourists may have different frequencies of chronic diseases — a risk factor for worse outcomes with SARS-CoV-2 infection — than the general population. Adding these extra sources of uncertainty, reasonable estimates for the case fatality ratio in the general U.S. population vary from 0.05% to 1%.

Related:

Coronavirus model shows individual hospitals what to expect in the coming weeks

That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05% is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.

Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.

These “mild” coronaviruses may be implicated in several thousands of deaths every year worldwide, though the vast majority of them are not documented with precise testing. Instead, they are lost as noise among 60 million deaths from various causes every year.

Although successful surveillance systems have long existed for influenza, the disease is confirmed by a laboratory in a tiny minority of cases. In the U.S., for example, so far this season 1,073,976 specimens have been tested and 222,552 (20.7%) have tested positive for influenza. In the same period, the estimated number of influenza-like illnesses is between 36,000,000 and 51,000,000, with an estimated 22,000 to 55,000 flu deaths.

Note the uncertainty about influenza-like illness deaths: a 2.5-fold range, corresponding to tens of thousands of deaths. Every year, some of these deaths are due to influenza and some to other viruses, like common-cold coronaviruses.

In an autopsy series that tested for respiratory viruses in specimens from 57 elderly persons who died during the 2016 to 2017 influenza season, influenza viruses were detected in 18% of the specimens, while any kind of respiratory virus was found in 47%. In some people who die from viral respiratory pathogens, more than one virus is found upon autopsy and bacteria are often superimposed. A positive test for coronavirus does not mean necessarily that this virus is always primarily responsible for a patient’s demise.

 

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths. This sounds like a huge number, but it is buried within the noise of the estimate of deaths from “influenza-like illness.” If we had not known about a new virus out there, and had not checked individuals with PCR tests, the number of total deaths due to “influenza-like illness” would not seem unusual this year. At most, we might have casually noted that flu this season seems to be a bit worse than average. The media coverage would have been less than for an NBA game between the two most indifferent teams.

Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000 … along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop?

The most valuable piece of information for answering those questions would be to know the current prevalence of the infection in a random sample of a population and to repeat this exercise at regular time intervals to estimate the incidence of new infections. Sadly, that’s information we don’t have.

In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work. School closures, for example, may reduce transmission rates. But they may also backfire if children socialize anyhow, if school closure leads children to spend more time with susceptible elderly family members, if children at home disrupt their parents ability to work, and more. School closures may also diminish the chances of developing herd immunity in an age group that is spared serious disease.

This has been the perspective behind the different stance of the United Kingdom keeping schools open, at least until as I write this. In the absence of data on the real course of the epidemic, we don’t know whether this perspective was brilliant or catastrophic.

Flattening the curve to avoid overwhelming the health system is conceptually sound — in theory. A visual that has become viral in media and social media shows how flattening the curve reduces the volume of the epidemic that is above the threshold of what the health system can handle at any moment.

Related:

The novel coronavirus is a serious threat. We need to prepare, not overreact

Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated. If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse: Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.

One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people died.

One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue. Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.

John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University.

[MrXxxx]

37 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

 

Oil/Gas Producers,PM miners,Potash,Copper,Tobacco,Uranium,Rare earths,probably in that order.Just my view.

Good luck CP,hope you get home.

It won't make an ounce of difference to what I do with the kids tomorrow.Sad thing is that Boris has come up with his plan but he's clearly never called for police help on a friday night in Leicestershire.Reliable rumours put the number of on duty police at around the 35 level even for a friday night.His plan is unenforceable in the middle class suburbs,let alone the inner cities or the rural areas.

Police have better things to do than nicking my 75 year old mother for going to WIlko to buy cider vinegar,like stopping people stabbing each other.

It will be `interesting` to see how this one goes...

..I can remember how Thatcher got it wrong with the Poll Tax and the general populace responded to her threat of prison with "FU"...

...I feel however that since those times the demography has changed, become far more meek, and as a result will `do as they are told` without question....I do hope I am wrong thought, because the way BJ has behaved in the last month he needs a good `political kicking` to remind him whom he serves!

[MrXxxx]

27 minutes ago, sancho panza said:

Police have better things to do than nicking my 75 year old mother for going to WIlko to buy cider vinegar,like stopping people stabbing each other

But they will go for the easy target, and if the media demonise people like your 75yr old mother the Sheeple will agree and socially condemn them.

[Bobthebuilder]

31 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

But they will go for the easy target, and if the media demonise people like your 75yr old mother the Sheeple will agree and socially condemn them.

No, tell them to f**k off, there is nothing they can do.

[Barnsey]

Still waiting for my text 

Some predictions emerging of a real nasty stimulus driven snap back of inflation but surely it’s going to take more than 6 months to materialise as we face this deflation monster? David Hunter still of the belief that this -35% fall in S&P was just a pull back and that we’ll see a melt up to new highs and an 80% collapse by year end. Fair to say his expectations of a rapid response were let down massively by the Fed, predicting a turnaround at 2900 and yet we went down to 2235 area, also misjudging the collapse in yields which he wasn’t expecting until the bust. Then again, Gold has held up fairly well, and not collapsed to $1000.
 

Having seen Silver fall to under $12 (albeit briefly), and oil getting close to $20, I’m of course tempted to say we’ve kinda had our collapse especially given what unemployment numbers will be released shortly, but I guess this unlimited QE and then a whiff of inflation as the virus abates for the summer could cause CBs to consider pulling away the honey? The mere hint of which might be enough to cause collapse?

I dunno, lots to process, just seems too easy to assume virus situation greatly improves and we’re a straight trajectory upward from there doesn’t it?