COVID-19 News (27th of March)
United Kingdom
The UK government suspends the housing market (link, paywall).
United States
Alaska and Hawaii implemented a mandatory 14-days quarantine for incoming travelers (link and link, via Balaji Srinivasan). Expect other states to follow soon. Soon, domestic might not mean the same thing anymore.
“On the day the US reported its highest weekly unemployment claim of all time by quadruple, the Dow Jones rose 1,300 points. Put *that* in your models.” – Josh Brown
“Indices trading like penny stocks” – @Hipster_Trader.
This image (via Yoni Appelbaum) shows that US Senators don’t quite understand the risks of the virus and the benefits of social distancing yet.
Spain
Madrid might have 50,000 cases instead of the 17,000 official ones, if we consider the symptomatic but untested patients isolated in their homes, according to the Spanish Health Counselor Enrique Ruiz Escudero (link in Spanish). A Spanish study suggests that there are 500,000 cases in Spain (link in Spanish). I do not endorse the study, but I think it is directionally correct – there are probably 50k-500k cases in Spain.
Here is yesterday’s essay of mine on evidence of undercounted deaths (link).
I previously reported in this newsletter that the Spanish government bought quick tests which do not work properly (30% sensibility instead of >80%) – it now emerged that the Spanish government bought them from an unlicensed Chinese company (link in Spanish).
Italy
Italy is running out of test kits and of reagents (link, in Italian, paywalled).
The number of new official cases in Italy is rising again, after a few days of decreasing. I am highly suspicious that the trend in real cases will begin decreasing within the next week and a half with the lockdown as the only measure, for the lockdown does not prevent in-house contagion between family members.
Italy continues to distribute face masks in prisons (virus powder kegs).
An Italian priest who went from house to house to perform blessings tested positive. He was coughing at the time but didn't stay home. In the area, schools were already closed & events limited but the bishops authorized the benedictions (link). Virus pollinators.
Also, in Italy, localism saving lives:
France
In France more than 147 nursing homes registered at least 2 cases (link). Worrying, if you begin thinking how did the virus get in there – the residents are not the kind of person to go out very much. Possible cue of extremely widespread contagion?
“Some COVID-19 patients are to be transported by specially-equipped high-speed train in France's Alsace region, where hospitals are struggling to cope with the number of cases. The patients will be transferred by train to regions where hospitals have greater spare capacity.” – AFP.
Also, it seems that French GPs estimate that 40,000 of their patients contracted the virus, judging from their symptoms (link in French). For sure, not all of these 40k do have the virus. On the other side, only 25,000 people in France got tested so far. An additional cue that French cases are under-counted.
Canada
Ontario stockpiled 55 million face masks, then destroyed them because they were expired (link). Death by bureaucracy.
As mentioned yesterday in the paragraph on Belgium having done the same, this is idiocy. Yes, masks degrade with time, but if you’re not buying new ones, keeping the old ones is better than nothing.
New cases
-USA: +16,980 cases, +256 deaths
-Spain: +8,271 cases, +718 deaths
-Germany: +6,615 cases, +61 deaths
-Italy: +6,153 cases, +712 deaths
-France: +3,922 cases, +365 deaths
-Global: +60,099 cases, +2,764 deaths
(These are the floor, real cases are more.)
Redundancy
3M doubled face mask production practically overnight, thanks to idle machinery it installed when, back in 2003, it realized it could not meet surge demand during the SARS epidemic (link).
Redundancy is a competitive advantage. If you don’t think so, it’s likely because you are using the price of products during normal times to make the cost-benefit analysis. However, usually, when redundancy gets used, the prices of the advantages it produces are higher than normal.
About me: I’m Luca Dellanna, the author of 5 books.
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