Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Syt]

The 23 or so class mates of the infected Lower Austrian boy, plus 4 of his teachers, have been asked not to leave their homes till March 11th as a precaution.

[bogh]

First infection in Denmark yesterday - at my job. A dozen people were quarantined. A bit surreal to be in the midst of really.

[DGuller]

Should we make a bet to see who's the first poster to get it? 

My money is on bogh.

[Valmy]

First infection in Denmark yesterday - at my job. A dozen people were quarantined. A bit surreal to be in the midst of really.

Holy shit man, I hope you are ok.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think most of them would be able to bake bread.

Very easy to do:
https://www.bestbuy.ca/en-ca/category/bread-makers/32301

They've turned out better with a box mix than trying to do it from scratch.

[Liep]

First infection in Denmark yesterday - at my job. A dozen people were quarantined. A bit surreal to be in the midst of really.

They quarantined 7 people from my job today because they had traveled with Koreans who had the virus. Luckily they hadn't been to work yet after returning.

[crazy canuck]

Our tax dollars at work.  And leftists wonder why I'm against giving more power to the government.

No, I wonder why you think any government would be as incompetent as your current government.

Well, if Trudeau was to make a speech about how he has everything under control and said something like "just watch me", I'd be really worried too. 

Exactly, we can have more confidence given the actions of the Health Minister

[merithyn]

Syt posted this topic over a month ago.  How long has this virus been out there?  Are we getting fucked over because the Chinese tried to hide this to save face?

I've been wondering what the timeline is expected to be before it's crossed the seven seas and infected the seven continents. And eventually blown through.

Will it be faster or slower than the Spanish Flu? That took a little over a year before the deaths slowed down significantly.

Don't the 6 inhabited continents now all have cases?

The bolded part was really my question.

[Legbiter]

First confirmed case here. Male, early 50's, just came back from a ski trip in Northern Italy. His family and workmates have all been quarantined and further contact tracing is still possible although God knows how long.

The good news is Antarctica still hasn't reported a case.

[Legbiter]

Syt posted this topic over a month ago.  How long has this virus been out there?  Are we getting fucked over because the Chinese tried to hide this to save face?

I've been wondering what the timeline is expected to be before it's crossed the seven seas and infected the seven continents. And eventually blown through.

Will it be faster or slower than the Spanish Flu? That took a little over a year before the deaths slowed down significantly.

It's already incredibly fast. Containment chances are dwindling so that works out to around 40-60% of humanity will get infected in the next year and a half if control measures are not implemented. We need to drastically pare down our local contact networks and be extremely meticulous with frequent hand washing during the day. Avoid crowds as much as possible. If containment fails completely then only changes in social behaviour will bring the R0 down.

[Razgovory]

Where are you getting this 40-60% number?

[Legbiter]

Harvard University epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch is predicting the coronavirus "will ultimately not be containable" and, within a year, will infect somewhere between 40 and 70 percent of humanity, The Atlantic reports. But don't be too alarmed. Many of those people, Lipsitch clarifies, won't have severe illnesses or even show symptoms at all, which is already the case for many people who have tested positive for the virus.

https://theweek.com/speedreads/897799/harvard-scientist-predicts-coronavirus-infect-70-percent-humanity

Spanish Flu did roughly the same thing.

[Sheilbh]

Where are you getting this 40-60% number?

Similarly Jeremy Hunt, former Health Secretary and leadership contender, was speaking about this:

In Wuhan, it appears that it has peaked at less than 5% of the population getting it. And we are having to make contingency plans for 70% of the population getting it, and in terms of the number of lives lost, there is a massive difference, hundreds of thousands of lives difference, if you can contain it to less than 5%.

And, so, the question we have to ask ourselves, and I think the government is right to start to spell this out – but I think they need to go further – is what are the social and economic trade-offs that we are prepared to make to keep the spread of the virus at that low level.

We are starting to hear some of the things that the government is considering. We are a mature democracy and I think it is perfectly possible to count on the co-operation of the public to comply with guidelines and recommendations made by the government without the kind of authoritarian measures that we have seen on our TV screens.

Infected count in the UK now up to 20 - but the latest case is a GP so quite a high risk of infecting others.

Apparently the government and the NHS are preparing "reasonable worst case scenario" plans which include getting the military, British Red Cross and St John's Ambulance ( I genuinely just thought they handed out water at park runs) to support in hospitals.

Edit: And apparently the latest case is the first person-to-person transmission in the UK.

Edit: Also a fair amount of chuntering about the PM not necessarily being across his brief on this or really having a grip - and not just from the usual suspects. It may be nothing, the Health Secretary's got a reputation for being fairly competent and the government seem to be doing more to get a grip on it. But still.

[alfred russel]

And trillions of market cap have disappeared--a large portion of which can be attributed to anticipated lost economic activity due to the response to the virus. It doesn't cost a penny to tell people to avoid unnecessary trips outside the home but the restaurant owner that has his business fail has suffered a real costs (which won't even be directly included in those market cap losses, btw).

I think you are making unwarranted assumptions about causation.

"Market cap" is an abstraction as for that matter is the market itself.  There are lots of reasons why stock markets go up or down.  Stock markets have no agency so one is left to guess at the motivations of millions of disparate people that participate in them.

In this case, key contributor tothe decline could be:
1) The markets went way up in recent months despite weak fundamentals like earnings. Participants thought that markets were due for a correction and thus any decline for any reason was prone to result in a rout.
2) The news that China was shutting down huge swaths of factory production including quarantines of entire major industrial centers is a big negative indicator for a world economy reliant on Chinese workers and companies to perform basic production and assembly tasks and where those same workers and companies are also a significant and rising source of demand.
3) Uncertainty about what the full effects of the virus will ultimately be.  "Markets" hate radical uncertainty.
4) Reaction to the observed response or expected response of individuals worldwide.
5) Reaction to actual or expected US government directives to stay home.

Of all these possible reasons, (5) is clearly the least plausible, for the simple reason no such directives have been issued and US leadership has clearly signaled a comparative lack of urgency.

If (3) and (4) are major contributors, then the best way for the government to address the problem is to take very aggressive approach to try to end the crisis as soon as possible.  The upfront cost of doing that is more than offset by accelerating the timeframe for a return to normality.  Since markets are forward looking, there should be a quick recovery once the crisis is in the rearview mirror.

If I am correct, then a perceived lax response by the US government to the virus is likely to panic markets further.

It is looking likely to be a global pandemic and the US stock markets are dominated by multinationals. But for what it is worth, my company is putting in place severe travel restrictions and preparing crisis response plans in the event everyone starts working from home in the coming days. In parts of Asia (including areas beyond china) people are already working from home (in China they never came back from new year). Other companies are apparently doing the same.

It makes less difference what governments are or are not doing if the private sector is taking drastic action anyway.

[The Minsky Moment]

It makes less difference what governments are or are not doing if the private sector is taking drastic action anyway.

I agree in terms of immediate market impact.
But in a different sense it may matter a lot what governments do or don't do.