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It seems that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to dominate the news globally with incidence and death rates continuing to rise essentially exponentially! Certainly in both the US and the UK all sorts of twists and turns continue with Trump especially struggling to maintain consistent messaging. Towards the end of the week both the US and UK look to be badly out of control and not able to remove lockdowns for weeks at least.
In OZ the virus looks to be controlled and consideration of how to wind down the various strictures and open what feels like a pretty mortally wounded economy is top of mind. It will not be easy and is very unlikely to be anything near smooth.
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Major Issues.
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A national emergency is no time for an attack on retirement savings
Paul Keating
Former prime minister of Australia
April 13, 2020 — 12.10am
It is a particularly low thing to do, to exploit a national health emergency, particularly one as grave as the one brought on by the current hyper infectious virus, to blatantly pursue a purely ideological gambit, to destroy a national institution – but this is what businessman Tony Shepherd is attempting to do with superannuation.
Shepherd’s proposal is to suspend the 9.5 per cent of wages currently allocated to individual superannuation accounts, to break the compulsory saving of the entire workforce, whether the great majority of the workforce need or could use the extra cash income or not.
This proposal is utterly different than that proposed by the government, where up to $20,000 of superannuation savings could, in calibrated circumstances of need, be made available to superannuation savers.
Shepherd’s proposal is to suspend the national capital flow into superannuation altogether, the whole 9.5 per cent of it, in the hope that he and ideological accomplices like him, can stand the government up in not having a suspended 9.5 per cent ever reinstated.
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Want to switch your super to cash? Think again
Switching crystallises losses and even the savviest investors will have trouble figuring out when to re-enter the market so as to fully capture the rebound.
Apr 14, 2020 – 4.11pm
If you've been struck with an overwhelming desire to move your superannuation to cash in the midst of the coronavirus chaos on markets, you're not alone.
In fact, behavioural economists have a name for the phenomenon: prospect theory.
Also known as loss-aversion theory, it is the preference to avoid losses more than acquire equivalent gains.
"Put simply, the pain of losing $100 is more pronounced than the joy of making $100," says Alastair MacLeod, the managing director of boutique asset manager Wheelhouse Partners.
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Science interventions to help resurrect the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef could be healthier in 30 years’ time than it is today with the use of new technologies to build resilience together with action on climate change, one of Australia’s leading marine scientists has said.
Australian Institute of Marine Science chief executive Paul Hardisty said early research had shown some “really remarkable positive outcomes”.
AIMS is spearheading a $300m research effort launched on Thursday to further investigate novel ways to protect the Great Barrier Reef from coral bleaching and other impacts of climate change.
Painting clouds white with a fine mist of sea water to reflect sunlight, creating areas of dense fog, breeding and dispersing more heat-tolerant corals and stepping up work to kill crown-of-thorns starfish will all be fully assessed. Forty-three projects were culled from 160 methods that were included in a two-year feasibility study.
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Bushfire Crisis And Climate Policy
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There are no entries in this category.
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Coronavirus And Impacts.
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Coronavirus triggers Australian self-sufficiency push
By Mike Foley and Jennifer Duke
April 13, 2020 — 12.00am
Australia's reliance on imported products will be put under the microscope by the federal government as it pushes the economy to become more self-sufficient in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Federal Agriculture Minister David Littleproud has started quietly pulling together a policy roundtable from the public and private sectors so agriculture is the industry "best placed" to thrive after COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed as rain soaks into drought-baked paddocks of eastern Australia.
Mr Littleproud said even though agriculture delivered just 2 per cent of GDP, the industry would be crucial in helping the nation rebound after this crisis.
"Growing the industry is going to be so important to helping our nation repair. It's the bedrock of our nation's economy and our nation's security," he said.
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Pandemic softens Morrison's dole control
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
April 13, 2020 — 12.00am
Since it’s Easter, let me tell you about something that’s long puzzled me: how can an out-and-proud Pentecostalist such as Prime Minister Scott Morrison be leading the most un-Christian government I can remember? Fortunately, however, the virus crisis seems to be bringing out his more caring side.
Many people think being a Christian means being obsessed with sexual matters - abortion, homosexuality and same-sex marriage – plus, these days, their human right to discriminate against people who don’t share their sexual taboos.
But if you read the four gospels recording what Jesus did and said, one message you get is one rarely emphasised by his modern-day, generally better-off followers. Jesus was always on about the plight of the poor, and was surprisingly tough on the rich.
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Coronavirus: World needs a global approach to fight: Bill Gates
Bill Gates
Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to dozens of experts about COVID-19, and there’s clear evidence that the disease does discriminate in a few ways: It kills the old more often than the young, men more often than women, and it disproportionately impacts the poor .
But here’s something I’ve seen no evidence of: COVID-19 discriminating on the basis of nationality. The virus doesn’t care about borders.
I mention this because since the world became aware of the virus early January, governments have focused on their own national responses. How can they protect the people living inside their borders? And that’s understandable. But with such an infectious and widespread virus, leaders must also recognise that so long as there is COVID-19 somewhere, it concerns people everywhere.
COVID-19 hasn’t yet hit many low- and middle-income countries hard. We’re not exactly sure why. But what we do know is that the disease will eventually spread widely in these nations, and without more help, the caseloads and death tolls will likely be worse than anything we’ve seen so far. Consider this: COVID-19 has overwhelmed cities like New York, but the numbers suggest that even a single Manhattan hospital has more intensive-care beds than most African countries. Millions could die.
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Coronavirus: after the lockdown
Clive Cookson, George Parker and Chris Giles
Apr 13, 2020 – 11.57am
As the UK and most of Europe enjoyed glorious Easter sunshine, few people could take part in traditional festivities. With travel and social gatherings banned in most countries to reduce the transmission of coronavirus, many look forward desperately to emerging from a lockdown that is not only curtailing personal lives but also destroying businesses and the global economy.
Some European countries, including Austria, Denmark and Norway, have announced tentative plans to relax the most stringent measures later this month, for example by allowing some shops and schools to reopen. But governments in the nations hit hardest by COVID-19 – Italy, Spain, France and the UK – are reluctant to talk openly about exit strategies. They do not want to distract people from observing lockdowns while death tolls are still rising.
As Rishi Sunak, UK chancellor, declared last week: “The priority right now is to stop the spread of the virus and get us to the other side of the peak.”
Behind closed doors, however, ministers and health officials everywhere are beginning to discuss what happens next. The debates about exit strategies focus on two themes: how to manage a staged and gradual reopening of some places of work, education, culture and entertainment; and what sort of “test and trace” regime would be needed to detect and suppress new virus outbreaks once the initial wave has subsided.
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Thousands of students 'could become destitute'
Robert Bolton
As many as 100,000 international students "could become destitute" after losing casual jobs but not being entitled to help under the federal government's JobSeeker and JobKeeper rescue programs says the International Education Council of Australia.
The Council said Australia had a duty of care to students who through no fault of their own have run into difficulty.
Chief executive Phil Honeywood said international students relied on part time jobs for their living expenses but now had no work, could not go home because of exorbitant airfares and travel prohibitions, but they still have living expenses and fees.
"Australia has often been labelled as too motivated by making dollars out of international student compared to countries such as New Zealand and UK. We will play into that negative narrative if we say no to any form of financial support to these young people."
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'It's worth a shot': Australia's endgame must be total elimination of the virus
By John Daley and Stephen Duckett
April 13, 2020 — 11.30am
Six weeks into the COVID-19 crisis, Australian governments are still hedging about which endgame they’re playing for. That’s understandable – uncertainties abound, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The least-bad endgame is to eliminate the virus from Australia, continue to control our borders until there is a vaccine or a cure, and restore domestic economic and social activity to “normal”, albeit keeping a close watch for new cases.
The outcomes of this endgame would be much better than the alternatives. Obviously, fewer Australians would be infected. And the economic costs would be much lower because much more economic and social activity could go back to normal within a few months, whereas under the alternatives many activities would remain curtailed until there is a vaccine or a cure – or we lose patience and accept a lot more deaths.
The leading alternative to an elimination strategy is to hold infection rates at close to one – that is, so each infected person on average infects only one other. It’s the “Goldilocks strategy” – it requires us to calibrate social distancing measures with precision. Too tight, and we inflict extra economic damage for a long time. A little too loose, and infections would again grow exponentially – which can seem manageable for several weeks, until suddenly it isn’t.
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Leading us out of the maze will be as hard as taking us in
Shaun Carney
Columnist for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald
April 12, 2020 — 11.59pm
It’s easier to walk into a maze than it is to walk out. Once the coronavirus started arriving here by plane and cruise ship just a few months ago, what needed to be done gradually made itself clear: we had to shut down as much of our normal activity as possible. For how long, no one really knew. We still don’t know. When I say “we”, I mean governments as well as ordinary Australians.
Now that we’re not quite all the way into lockdown mode but somewhere near it, our lives are in the hands of our political leaders and those who advise them to a greater extent than at any time since World War Two. What’s been done up till now is having a positive effect. There’s some success at pushing back at COVID-19, although it’s still taking lives and making too many of us incredibly sick.
However, the great challenge is still ahead of us: when and how do we start to relax the restrictions governing our movements, our income, our businesses, our education and our health? Some will see it as a mechanistic challenge, with our leaders looking at numbers and projections and taking soundings from scientists before deciding what to do. So much of modern governance is about process, about avoiding risk and building in degrees of certainty.
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We may be over-reacting to an unremarkable coronavirus
Stay safe. Keep well. Perhaps a hysteria has gripped the nation, at extraordinary cost, when we’re telling each other to take special care over a disease that in three months has killed about 60, in the main quite unwell elderly people.
Even in coronavirus hot spots in Europe and the US, there’s greater chance of being killed in a car accident than being harmed by COVID-19, according to research published last week by Stanford scientist John Ioannidis.
“The risk of dying from coronavirus for a person under 65 years old is equivalent to the risk of dying driving a distance of nine to 415 miles by car each day during the COVID-19 fatality season,” he concluded.
Yet many of those under-65s have had their lives pulled apart, including loss of 195 million jobs around the world this quarter, according to the International Labour Organisation.
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There is now an exit path from this lockdown
We may have been too pessimistic about the success of lockdown. Now the health experts should take charge of a phased ending to social and economic restrictions.
Apr 14, 2020 – 12.00am
The loss of GDP or national income in this period will probably never be recovered. In rough terms, a loss of 10 per cent of GDP over six months is $100 billion, or $550 million a day.
This loss of income in our community is being spread over millions of people and businesses. It is also reducing our capacity to provide for the wellbeing of our country.
Government is rightly borrowing and spending heavily to ameliorate some of that harm. This is what a fair and just society like Australia should and must do.
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Infection rate falls below one, raising hopes virus is fading
Apr 14, 2020 – 12.00am
One of the government's top advisers says the key measure of Australia's COVID-19 infection rate has fallen below 1 – the point at which the virus begins to fade.
Melbourne University mathematics professor James McCaw, a co-author of the Doherty Institute epidemiological modelling released last week, said his team had been making estimates of the effective reproduction rate – known as the "Reff" – about twice a week, and are looking to release a public version of the number.
"There is enough local data now to create a Reff. A fortnight ago we did not have that confidence, but my group's estimate is it is well under one," Professor McCaw told The Australian Financial Review.
"That number is true in each of the states where there is enough data to make an estimate with confidence: NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.
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What 'back to normal' could look like
Treat with caution any equity manager who suggests their portfolio does not require change.
Apr 14, 2020 – 10.32am
Discussion has turned to what will change when COVID-19 has normalised, assuming the virus remains a constant but manageable presence.
The impact on business will translate into a different outlook for equities. Inevitably there are plenty of assumptions of the consequences – many will only have a passing glance and then fade, and others are likely to evolve in ways we don’t anticipate.
There are three that gain the most attention.
Supply chains
There have been unusual difficulties. Products became unavailable, inputs were in short supply, over-reliance on region or one source suddenly became obvious and logistics had to be reinvented.
Will companies now de-risk by reducing dependence on a narrow source? Will governments require stocks of products deemed essential? It is entirely possible that this epidemic will be judged a one-off, yet corporate boards will want to ramp up risk procedures to mitigate against all kinds of unknowns.
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No snapback until Sydney and Melbourne return to normal
Shane Wright
Senior economics correspondent
April 13, 2020 — 4.00pm
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed key insights into the Australian economy. Before this terrible onslaught, few ever gave a thought to buying loo paper. Operators of large businesses believed they were "essential" to the economy's operation. Taking an L-plater for a drive was perfectly legal.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is expected to reveal this week one of the biggest one-month increases in unemployment while the global economy is facing its deepest downturn on record.
Now, some of our political leaders quietly (and some business leaders more loudly) are arguing it is time to work out how the Australian economy will be stirred from its medically induced coma.
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Chinese authorities' latest wildlife trade outrage is mindbogglingly reckless
Peter Hartcher
Political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald
April 14, 2020 — 12.01am
The Chinese Communist Party is making a great show of its humanitarian help to countries suffering from the new coronavirus. "China selflessly extends helping hand to countries around the world in global battle against COVID-19," said a March 25 headline in the English language version of the party's official mouthpiece, People's Daily.
By the end of last week, Beijing had dispatched medical teams to advise 10 nations. Poor countries in Asia including Cambodia, Laos, the Philippines, Myanmar and Pakistan. And countries further afield including Iran, Iraq and Venezuela.
And it has sent supplies of medical equipment and money to a much larger group – 82 countries altogether, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. But nowhere has its aid diplomacy been more gratefully received than in Rome.
When a desperate Italy called for help from its European neighbours, it initially received none as each capital locked down its own supplies, a shocking failure of European solidarity. Beijing stepped into the void and sent Italy a medical team as well as 1000 ventilators, 50,000 test kits and 2 million masks, among other essentials.
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Coronavirus: Sewage analysis to flush out levels of infection
Testing the nation’s sewage will give authorities the clearest picture of the level of coronavirus in waste water and enable epidemiologist to detect how far the infection has spread in the country.
Immunologist and Nobel Laureate Professor Peter Doherty has said testing sewage is an efficient and effective way of detecting how many people are being infected by coronavirus – a sentiment echoed by scientists around the world.
Professor Doherty said from a laboratory level, focused testing on hotspots and areas around them are needed to intensely monitor if there are any further traces of the infection.
“Testing sewage sounds pretty unattractive, but in fact, it’s done regularly for testing for poliovirus and norovirus,” Professor Doherty, who heads up the eponymous Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, said.
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Content quotas, spectrum fees waived for 2020
Apr 15, 2020 – 10.16am
Television and radio spectrum fees will be waived for 12 months, $50 million put into regional news gathering and content quotas will be suspended for the rest of 2020, in a relief package from the government to help media companies navigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher announced the package on Wednesday as part of an effort to help media companies, which are experiencing heavy drop offs in advertising revenue due to brands pulling planned spending during government imposed restrictions on movement aimed at stopping the spread of coronavirus.
"Many Australians are doing it tough right now and the media sector is sharing that pain, especially in regional areas. Broadcasters and newspapers face significant financial pressure and COVID-19 has led to a sharp downturn in advertising revenue across the whole sector," Mr Fletcher said.
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Australians brace for a year of working from home
Apr 14, 2020 – 5.31pm
Australians are digging in for the long social distancing haul, with new data revealing that most expect government restrictions to last for four to six months and do not anticipate normal working life returning for up to a year.
Results from surveys run by C|T Group, formerly Crosby Textor, from April 2-5 and March 23-26 reveal that the public's expectations for when restrictions would lift lengthened between the two weeks.
Perceptions of the pandemic also shifted from it being in its early stages to now heading toward its peak.
In other countries, in contrast, people expected their social and work lives to return to normal earlier, despite having higher incidences of COVID-19 infections and mortalities than Australia.
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The next stage must be to let the virus spread
Modelling of the economic costs versus the health benefits shows that Australia should move to quickly relax social distancing measures.
Apr 15, 2020 – 12.00am
Last week, the government released the modelling it uses to inform its pandemic response. It appeared reticent; in press conferences, the government was keen to stress its limitations, its use of overseas assumptions and so on, as if to say: "We are not relying on models to decide what to do". It should not have been.
Disease modelling is one of the best tools we have for shaping our pandemic response. The government's modelling is sound. It aligned closely with ours (I would hope so); we predict 32,000 daily ICU admissions at the peak if we do nothing, the government predicts 35,000. It presents a coherent picture of why we are "flattening the curve" and strong justification for what is being done today.
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What flattening the curve really means
The "flatten the curve" approach is actually a "herd immunity" strategy. For Australia to achieve herd immunity, the virus would have to infect about 60 per cent of the population – about 15 million Australians.
Apr 15, 2020 – 12.00am
The Australian government must be clear about which strategy it is following – either we accept that the virus will remain at large in the community, flaring up occasionally, or we aim to eliminate it in Australia altogether.
The government’s stated objective to date has been to "flatten the curve" so the health system is not overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. But the government has not articulated what the "flatten the curve" approach actually means in the long term.
The virus is here to stay, so this approach effectively accepts that many millions of Australians will become infected by the virus – just at a slower rate and over a longer period of time than if we "let it rip".
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Worst since Great Depression: IMF warns of $130b hit to Australia
By Shane Wright
April 14, 2020 — 10.30pm
Australia will endure its largest economic hit since the onset of the Great Depression, the International Monetary Fund has warned, with unemployment to remain high for at least two more years in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Releasing forecasts for the global economy overnight, the IMF predicts the Australian economy will contract by 6.7 per cent this year, or almost $130 billion. It would be the single largest hit since 1930 when the economy is estimated to have contracted by 9.5 per cent as the Great Depression set in.
Treasury has forecast unemployment to reach 10% but Treasurer Josh Frydenberg says it would have been a lot worse without the JobKeeper package. It comes as Labor again pushes for the wage subsidy scheme to be extended to casuals.
While the fund believes the economy will grow by 6.1 per cent in 2021, it would still leave Australian GDP smaller than it was at the end of 2019.
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We've mortgaged our children's future to protect health of ageing parents
By Mark Carnegie
April 15, 2020 — 12.00am
When you spend a significant part of your life in private equity, as I have, you tend to learn a lot about what makes the industry tick. Half of that time I’ve spent working alongside the Australian superannuation industry and it has let me see with crystal clarity just how vital the long term decisions the super industry can take is to our nation.
It is also important to know that if it gets stopped from making those long-term decisions because of government policy then the just developed venture capital industry, our world-leading infrastructure finance sector and even people like me will go back to working for foreigners at a great cost to Australia.
I unashamedly concede that my opinions and my knowledge are forged on the anvil of self-interest but I also know that the profit motive can generate very sharp insight.
The battle to save Australia from the ravages of COVID-19 was no place for the timid and overall our government acted with admirable courage, speed and good sense. However, the decision it took to allow hundreds of thousands of people to apply for early release of their super funds disturbs me.
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Aged care sector pleads for $1.3b emergency intervention
By Dana McCauley
April 14, 2020 — 11.59pm
Aged care providers are pleading for a $1.3 billion federal rescue package to keep the sector afloat as they shoulder the cost of keeping residents and home care recipients safe from COVID-19.
The call came as Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly backed calls for casual workers - who make up the bulk of the aged care workforce - to be supported to stay home when sick.
Providers say measures to contain the spread of the virus such as employing concierges to enforce strict visitation rules and price rises for personal protective equipment are hitting already stretched budgets.
"We need an emergency intervention to ensure we can stay open and continue to keep people safe," Aged and Community Services Australia chief executive Pat Sparrow told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. "We are already under pressure. There are additional costs to us of keeping people safe and that's what we want to do."
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Coronavirus: ‘We’re winning but we might never get rid of it’, say experts
Experts have warned it may not be possible to completely eradicate COVID-19 in Australia, despite the numbers of new cases continuing to dwindle.
Just 36 new cases were confirmed on Tuesday, including 11 in Queensland, 10 in Victoria, seven in NSW, six in Tasmania and one each in South Australia and Western Australia — not including three new cases among foreign crew members from the Artania cruise ship docked in Fremantle.
ANU infectious diseases physician and microbiologist Peter Collignon said Australia had done “very well” in flattening the infection curve, but warned it was likely to remain in the community at some level.
“It’d be nice if we had no cases, but unfortunately I don’t think that’s likely,” Professor Collignon said. “There is so much relatively mild symptom disease that I think it’s here for a while.
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Marks and Dimon nail market’s great disconnect
Jamie Dimon's warning on the US economy, and Howard Marks' concern about moral hazard, aren't worrying investors too much. But maybe they should.
Apr 15, 2020 – 11.58am
And on the fifth day, he rose again.
On Tuesday night, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon made his first public appearance since emergency heart surgery, declaring he’s feeling great and has no plans to retire.
"For a while I was unable to get back to work watching the markets gyrate a thousand dollars a day," Dimon said. "I was eager to get back."
But if Dimon is feeling better, his investors won’t be after the 70 per cent fall in March quarter earnings he delivered.
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Sorry, but don't expect lockdown to end any time soon
Jessica Irvine
Economics writer
April 15, 2020 — 11.21pm
On August 19, 1930, the two sides of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge touched in the middle for the very first time. Construction had begun back in 1923, with giant piers built on the northern and southern sides of the harbour.
From late 1928, two giant "creeper cranes" on both sides of the harbour began extending the bridge's arches, inch by inch, until they met in the middle. After extensive load testing, the bridge was finally opened to traffic on March 19, 1932.
Australians, we are told, are today "building a bridge" to a post-COVID-19 economic recovery.
Only this time, it seems we’re striking out from the south shore, extending perilously into mid-harbour, while a vast fog obscures the distant shoreline. There is no alternative, but it's hardly ideal conditions for bridge building.
For the metaphor fans out there, we’re also told we’re sending our economy into "hibernation". The impression being that it's only a matter of time before we emerge – cheeks unblemished by the ravages of time – to a sweet prince arousing us from slumber with true love’s first kiss.
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The coronavirus has altered what Australians worry about most
By Matt Wade
April 15, 2020 — 5.51pm
The coronavirus pandemic has dramatically altered what Australians worry about most as anxiety about health and job security surges to record highs and concern about the environment wanes.
The monthly Ipsos Issues Monitor, which asks a representative sample of the population to identify the three most important issues facing the nation, shows healthcare has emerged as the biggest national concern in the wake of the epidemic. The mass job losses caused by the coronavirus-induced downturn have also stoked fears about unemployment.
A record 55 per cent of respondents identified healthcare as a top concern in April, up from 33 per cent a month earlier.
Next highest was the state of the economy (47 per cent). But the most dramatic increase was in the share of respondents ranking unemployment among their biggest worries. That more than doubled from 16 per cent to 39 per cent, easily the highest in the decade-long history of the survey. The previous record was 33 per cent in August of 2014 when the national unemployment rate was 6.2 per cent.
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Coronavirus cases skyrocket in South Dakota after governor dismisses quarantine measures
Coronavirus infections have risen sharply in a rural US state after its governor resisted quarantine measures to slow the disease’s spread.
Vincent Barone
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed a woefully unprepared America and its fragile health care system.
South Dakota’s coronavirus cases have begun to soar after its governor steadfastly refused to mandate a quarantine.
The number of confirmed cases in the state has risen from 129 to 988 since April 1 — when Gov. Kristi Noem criticised the “draconian measures” of social distancing to stop the spread of the virus in her state.
Gov. Noem had criticised the quarantine idea as “herd mentality, not leadership” during a news conference, adding, “South Dakota is not New York.”
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What will the world look like after COVID-19?
An American historian’s book on the way plagues have shaped history and civilisation has never been more relevant than it is today.
· From The Times
April 15, 2020
In the mid-1950s, the American historian William McNeill was working on his classic The Rise of the West when he stumbled across a fact that stopped him in his tracks.
And it’s one that can help us understand the scale of what we are living through and the role it might play in the years ahead.
McNeill was studying the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 16th century and puzzling over the ability of Hernan Cortez, starting with fewer than 600 men, to conquer the Aztec empire with its millions of inhabitants. And why, come to think of it, did the Aztec religions simply disappear, usurped by Christianity? As he pondered these questions he happened upon this: on the night the Aztecs drove Cortez out of Mexico City, an epidemic of smallpox was raging there.
This fact helped McNeill answer two key questions. Why did the Aztecs not pursue the Spaniards after driving them out of the city, instead allowing them to regroup and renew their attack in greater numbers? And why did many Aztecs conclude that the invaders enjoyed divine support and that Christianity had shown its superiority?
Indeed, the implications were far greater and led McNeill to write arguably the best analysis of how disease changes history, Plagues and Peoples.
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Gilead gains on report coronavirus drug works
Drew Armstrong
Apr 17, 2020 – 8.44am
Gilead Sciences shares climbed in late trading Thursday after a report that a group of patients being treated in Chicago were seeing "rapid recoveries" in coronavirus fever and respiratory symptoms.
The report, from the medical news publication Stat, cited a video made by a researcher at the University of Chicago who is helping conduct a trial of Gilead's drug remdesivir.
The researcher, infectious disease professor Kathleen Mullane, said that most patients had been discharged from the hospital and only two had died, according to Stat.
Gilead's drug is one of the most-watched therapies being studied for treatment of Covid-19 patients.
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Why most COVID-19 forecasts were wrong
Turning this into a one-to-two month national holiday (via getting the less vulnerable back to work) and then reversion to a virus-mitigating “new normal” is key.
Apr 17, 2020 – 9.39am
On March 23 we published one of the most aggressive forecasts globally for the peak in new COVID-19 infections, which was dismissed by some as wildly optimistic. One crucial difference between our forecasting methodology and those used by the epidemiologists advising governments was that we had adopted an empirical approach whereas most epidemiological projections were based on theoretical simulations.
We started building real-time infection and fatality data tracking systems for every country in the world in February 2020, which updated automatically on a 15-minute basis. This allowed us to carefully monitor the evolution of the pandemic.
It was clear by late February that it was going global and markets would start failing due to their inability to properly price the distribution of risks surrounding this one-in-100-year shock. That is to say, we were going to see liquidity and solvency crises that could only be cauterised by extreme monetary and fiscal policy support, which unfortunately arrived three to five weeks late.
We then moved on to construct a novel forecasting framework that leveraged the evolution of real-time infections in the target country in question combined with assumptions regarding how effective that government’s containment regime would be. More precisely, the system allowed us to superimpose the average containment experience of all nations globally or any specific country that had experienced an earlier outbreak with a pre-selected hair cut to proxy for the target country’s relative containment efficacy.
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After 10 days of hell, take it from me: you don't want to catch this virus
Bevan Shields
Europe correspondent
April 16, 2020 — 3.00pm
London: The days had a grim rhythm before I got sick. As coronavirus tightened its grip on Europe, Spain's latest death toll would come in mid-morning, France and the United Kingdom would follow mid-afternoon and Italy at 5pm. Thousands would be dead by the time I filed my story before dinner.
It's strangely easy to become desensitised to death on an industrial scale, and I fear that is happening to some degree in Australia as well as here in the UK. Distracted by Boris Johnson's brush with mortality, Britain seems to have not fully come to grips with the scale of the unfolding disaster. More than 13,000 have now died, although the true figure is much higher because thousands of deaths in the community aren't included in the tally. The epidemic in the UK is tracking disturbingly close to Italy, whose plight once shocked the world.
I've been covering the pandemic since the first stages of the deadly outbreak around Milan and Venice in late February. It was obvious I could catch it. But as a healthy 34-year-old with no underlying health conditions, I wasn't overly worried about falling ill. I saw the virus as a big story to cover, not a threat to my health.
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What doctors on the front lines in New York wish they’d known a month ago
By Jim Dwyer
April 16, 2020 — 6.35pm
Just about a month ago, people stricken with the new coronavirus started to arrive in unending ranks at hospitals in the New York metropolitan area, forming the white-hot centre of the pandemic in the United States.
Now, doctors in the region have started sharing on medical grapevines what it has been like to re-engineer, on the fly, their health care systems, their practice of medicine, their personal lives.
Doctors, if you could go back in time, what would you tell yourselves in early March?
"What we thought we knew, we don't know," said Dr Nile Cemalovic, an intensive care physician at Lincoln Medical Centre in the Bronx.
Medicine routinely remakes itself, generation by generation. For the disease that drives this pandemic, certain ironclad emergency medical practices have dissolved almost overnight.
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World Health Organisation isn't perfect, but it's the best we've got
By Charlotte O'Leary
April 16, 2020 — 11.07pm
Intergovernmental organisations like the World Health Organisation are not perfect. I have worked there, as a small cog in the hallowed halls of Geneva. I have gathered with fellow civil society representatives and challenged the WHO to be more accountable, to be more responsive to health challenges, to be more of everything to everyone.
Indeed, the WHO and its parent organisation, the United Nations, have shortcomings and face challenges. But what is the alternative? We cannot go back from the era of international collaboration that defined the 20th century. Our world is far too interconnected – this pandemic has made that painfully obvious.
I fear for a world where governments have no faith in multilateral organisations. US President Donald Trump has slammed the WHO and said he would take moves to withdraw his country's considerable funding. Disappointingly, some Australian MPs have also attacked the organisation.
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Lethal virus also killing capitalism
A veteran Macquarie Group strategist says the coronavirus is accelerating the move towards a new world where whatever is left of free market signals disappear.
Apr 18, 2020 – 12.00am
Ask Macquarie Group strategist Viktor Shvets to explain why he believes capitalism is dying, or at least mutating into something closer to a version of communism, and his answer will take about 40 minutes.
This is not because his theory is overly complicated. It's because he cannot resist weaving references to economic history into his defence of the argument that governments are replacing the private sector as the primary allocators of capital.
Shvets says the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the trend towards greater concentration of state power and the "massive extension" of central monetary levers to a point where most asset classes will be eventually supported by a fusion of financing from governments and central banks.
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Government rules out new taxes on road to recovery
Government has led Australia's response to the COVID-19 crisis, but it will be business leading the recovery.
Apr 18, 2020 – 12.00am
Scott Morrison likes to call them bread crumbs. These are the little titbits he drops during his frequent coronavirus press conferences that hint at what the next steps might be.
In his opening remarks at Thursday's conference, which followed the latest meeting of the National Cabinet, the PM dropped the whole loaf.
Morrison described how the head of Treasury, Steven Kennedy, and the Reserve Bank of Australia governor, Philip Lowe, had told the National Cabinet that current economic policy settings would not generate the growth necessary to haul the economy out of the pit as the crisis abates.
The two highlighted, Morrison said, "the need to ensure that on the other side of the virus, as we make our road out, any sense of 'business as usual' when it comes to the policy frameworks we had prior to the election will need to be reconsidered".
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Plenty of potholes on the road to recovery
Apr 17, 2020 – 4.19pm
There will be potholes aplenty on the road to recovery from COVID-19. While it is heartening that Australia is planning to step on to the road, experts warn this virus seems to find the weak points in each country.
For Marylouise McLaws, professor of epidemiology at UNSW Sydney, the upcoming influenza season is a weak point.
“AS COVID-19 and ‘flu have similar symptoms, they are easily mistaken for one another, " she says.
"With an average of 300,000 visits to general practitioners each year related to flu and 18,000 hospitalisations, our healthcare providers and laboratories may be inundated with requests for COVID-19 tests.”
To reduce this risk, she suggests Australians take advantage of social isolation rules to have a flu shot so they have time to develop antibodies before the restrictions are rolled back.
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Australia adopts 'sentinel testing' regime to beat coronavirus
Apr 17, 2020 – 6.25pm
Australia's coronavirus testing regime will be adapted to include community surveillance strategies used to track serious influenza, broadening the sample and trying to spot outbreaks ahead of time.
Sentinel testing, also known as surveillance testing, is already being used in countries fighting COVID-19 overseas, and is done when it is not possible to test every person. A particular group in the community is selected and surveyed for a particular disease, in the expectation the results are representative of what is happening in the rest of the community.
New Zealand announced plans to move to sentinel testing on March 18.
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As Australia self-isolates from the world, economic recovery hangs in the balance
April 18, 2020 — 12.00am
Australia confronts two uneven paths to recovery from the coronavirus. The first journey starts in a matter of weeks as restrictions on social and economic activity are eased in painstakingly managed steps. The second could be delayed for up to two years as the border remains closed to minimise the risk of a new round of infections from overseas hotspots.
The distance between the two, between the revival of the domestic economy and its reconnection to the global economy through skilled migration and international education, will determine whether Australia avoids a deep, and prolonged recession.
The Morrison government insists the economy will rebound relatively quickly once local businesses can be reopened. That position was reinforced this week by the International Monetary Fund, which forecast a perfect V-shape recovery for Australia. Gross domestic product is expected to collapse by 6.7 per cent this year, and soar by 6.1 per cent in 2021.
But it is difficult to see how part two of this equation can be achieved while Australia effectively self-isolates from the rest of the world. More than half the nation’s population growth since 2005 has come from overseas migration, and the skilled program has been the dominant driver of the economy for the past decade.
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Optimism over snap back recovery faces reality check
· The Times
In a ritual that plays out at the end of each summer, beach resorts go into a form of lockdown. Seafront restaurants that hosted long queues for a table sit empty for months. Amusement parks are shuttered, their bumper cars sitting idle under cover, hunkering down for the resurrection that begins each spring.
In the optimistic view of some economists and investors, the coronavirus-induced shutdown is a global version of this localised hibernation. They argue that, whenever the lockdown is lifted, there’s good reason to believe that our economies will come roaring back to life like Atlantic City or Margate at the end of every May.
Lawrence Summers, US Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, and one of the most distinguished economists in the world, tweeted earlier this month: “The recovery can be faster than many people expect because it has the character of the recovery from the total depression that hits a Cape Cod economy every winter or recovery in American GDP that takes place every Monday morning.”
It’s a reassuring metaphor and, on the face of it, makes sense. Unlike previous recessions, this one wasn’t caused by an economy that was overheating or over-stretched by debt. It won’t need the kind of extended purge that’s been necessary in the past to restore equilibrium.
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The five weeks that shook the world
Richard Gluyas traces the history of one of the most extraordinary events to hit all levels of Australian business and asks what the future holds.
April 18, 2020
On January 24, almost a month before the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index cruised to its record high, a listed but little-known water decontamination company with a bunch of contracts in China published a salutary warning about the coronavirus.
Phoslock Environmental Technologies, chaired and partly-owned by funds management pioneer Laurence Freedman, reassured investors that there had been no impact on the business from the “current health concerns” in China, and staff had completed the first applications of its CSIRO blue-green-algae-busting technology in Wuhan last September and October.
“None of our staff has been affected and there has been no impact on PET’s business,” Phoslock said, in the first virus-related announcement by an ASX-listed company.
The mere mention of an Australian business connection to Wuhan, which is recognised as ground zero for the global spread of the rebadged COVID-19 virus, might have been expected to attract a glimmer of wider interest.
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Coming soon: the great debt monetisation
A bit more than $13 trillion has been committed to fiscal rescue by the governments of 15 major countries, most of it by the US and Europe.
Scores of smaller countries are being forced to increase health spending and are doing what they can to support those thrown out of work by lockdowns and illness, so add a couple of trillion to the total cost to world governments of the coronavirus.
Global government debt going into the crisis was $107 trillion, so the increase due to the coronavirus is about 14 per cent … so far. None of it is going to be repaid.
Most of the debt will be owned by central banks and they will either quietly make it disappear, or roll it over and decorate their balance sheets with it forever, like pictures of past governors on the hallowed walls.
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Just how deadly is this disease?
Chris Mooney, Juliet Eilperin and Joel Achenbach
Apr 18, 2020 – 12.16pm
The "case fatality rate" of COVID-19 varies wildly from country to country and even within nations from week to week.
In Germany, fewer than three out of every 100 people with confirmed infections have died. In Italy the rate is almost five times higher, according to official figures.
Singapore, renowned for its careful testing, contact tracing and isolation of patients, saw only 10 deaths out of 4,427 cases through April 16. That yields a strikingly low case fatality rate of 0.2 per cent.
In the United States, the case fatality rate has steadily ticked upward, from about 1.35 per cent in late March to over 4 per cent on April 15, according to figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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A man got COVID-19 three times. Should we be worried about reinfection?
By Liam Mannix
April 18, 2020 — 4.52pm
The 68-year-old was in a bad way. He had COVID-19, and his heart was failing.
Then, amazingly, he recovered. After a few days recuperating, he tested negative to COVID-19.
A little over a week later, he took another test – which came back positive. Back he went to hospital.
Seven days later, tests showed he was negative. Then, four days later, he tested positive again. Back again to hospital.
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How conspiracy theories about COVID-19 went viral
Why do epidemics breed conspiracy theories? And what do scientists say?
By Sherryn Groch, Chris Zappone and Felicity Lewis
April 18, 2020
As conspiracy theories go, the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic offered all the right ingredients. Scientists think the virus jumped from wild animals into humans, likely in late 2019 in the bustling Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market of Wuhan, central China.
But it just so happens that a half-hour drive from that market, across the Yangtze River, is China’s highest-security biosafety laboratory. At the Wuhan Institute of Virology, hazard suits are de rigueur for scientists studying some of the world’s most dangerous diseases.
Within days of news that a new deadly coronavirus had been identified in humans, unfounded claims that it was really a bioweapon or escaped experiment from this Wuhan lab were spreading nearly as fast as the virus itself.
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Royal Commissions And The Like.
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There are no entries in this category.
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National Budget Issues.
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Expanding JobKeeper to visa workers, casuals could cost $25 billion
By Jennifer Duke and Eryk Bagshaw
April 12, 2020 — 11.30pm
Helping two million people excluded from the historic JobKeeper program could rack up an extra $25 billion bill as the federal government wrestles to balance supporting workers with the climbing national debt.
There are millions of newly employed casuals and visa holders who are not eligible for the $1500 fortnightly payments. But adding an extra 1 million people onto the $130 billion JobKeeper program would cost an additional $18 billion, and the government has warned the public purse has already taken a pummelling.
Managing the global economic fall-out of the coronavirus pandemic, including its impacts on joblessness and debt, will be discussed at an International Monetary Fund teleconference and at a phone hook-up between G20 leaders and finance ministers this week.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has warned there will be a "big hole" in the global economy, raising concerns about the effect of cash outflows as investors rush to havens, and currency devaluations increase the cost of servicing debt.
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Jobless rise to hit 10pc: Treasury
Apr 13, 2020 – 10.30pm
Australia is headed for double digit unemployment due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the spike in joblessness would be twice as bad were it not for the $130 billion JobKeeper payment, new Treasury analysis reveals.
The analysis, to be released on Tuesday, estimates that the unemployment rate will climb from the pre-pandemic level of 5.1 per cent recorded for February, to a peak of 10 per cent in the June quarter.
If not for the JobKeeper package, which pays workers of coronavirus affected businesses a $1500a fortnight wage subsidy, the unemployment rate would peak at about 15 per cent.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said more than 80,000 businesses had registered for the wage subsidy.
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Record falls in activity, confidence: NAB
· Reuters
Measures of Australian business and consumer sentiment suffered their steepest falls on record in March as whole sectors of the economy were shut down to stem the coronavirus, likely tipping the country into its first recession in three decades.
National Australia Bank's index of business conditions dived to -21 in March, from 0 in February, far below the long-run average of +6.
The survey's measure of business confidence plunged to -66, from -2, the lowest in the history of the series and lower even than the recession of the early 1990s.
"Worryingly, but not surprisingly, business's outlook is the weakest ever," NAB Group chief economist Alan Oster said.
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Business confidence collapses: NAB survey
NAB’s monthly business survey has confirmed a sudden and calamitous collapse in corporate confidence and conditions in March, as large swathes of the economy were forced into hibernation to contain the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
“Business has essentially told us that trading conditions, profitability and employment all went backwards in a big way in the month,” NAB chief economist Alan Oster said.
The business confidence index dropped to -66 points – the lowest on record – from -2 points in February. Businesses said they were markedly more pessimistic than during the depths of the GFC – when the index reached -30 points – and the early 1990s recession, when it fell to -20 points.
Companies also reported a sharp decline in operating conditions, with the index falling to -20 points, consistent with the depth of the GFC, but still shy of the last recession, when the gauge dropped to -40 points.
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Consumer confidence in ‘disturbing’ record slump: Westpac
Consumer confidence has suffered a historic collapse in April, with Westpac’s monthly sentiment gauge plunging the most in its 47-year history to around levels last seen during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s.
The Westpac-Melbourne Institute index fell 18 per cent to 75.6 in April, from 91.9 in March, tracing the extraordinary spread of the coronavirus around the world and the ramping up of social isolation measures to control the rate of new infections in Australia and abroad.
Consumers are now almost as gloomy as they were during the deep recession of the early 1990s, when the index reached as low as 64.6 points, and as pessimistic as they were during the downturn a decade before that.
While still shy of previous recessionary depths, the pace of the fall in consumer confidence has eclipsed anything seen before.
Westpac chief economist Bill Evans described the results as “very disturbing”, and noted that “the lows in previous recessions were reached after one to two years of continuous deterioration compared to the one month collapse we have seen here”.
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Getting the tests right for JobKeeper
Many small businesses are confused about JobKeeper eligibility requirements. The government aim is to streamline the program as much as possible as quickly as possible. Who misses out?
Apr 15, 2020 – 6.42pm
Josh Frydenberg is keen to claim that the IMF’s grim prognosis for the Australian economy of a massive 6.7 per cent contraction this year and an unemployment heading higher next year was finalised before the JobKeeper program was announced.
The Morrison government is understandably proud of the scale of its $130 billion wage subsidy scheme aimed at helping businesses retain employees long enough to get through to economic recovery.
Yet it's not just big businesses grumbling their tougher threshold of suffering a 50 per cent decline in revenue is unfair. Many small and medium-sized businesses are also becoming more alarmed about eligibility requirements as they look at the ATO website.
To some extent that is just an inevitable byproduct of the need to have as much administrative simplicity as possible in a mass scheme being rolled out so quickly, even if it means some individuals will feel unfairly treated or left out.
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UNSW asks staff to take pay cut to stop job losses from $600m hit
By Anna Patty
April 15, 2020 — 5.50pm
The University of NSW is asking staff to volunteer for a pay cut to avoid job losses as it faces a $600 million budget hole because of the coronavirus pandemic and its reliance on international students.
In a message to staff on Tuesday, vice-chancellor Ian Jacobs said that if a large number of staff helped reduce the payroll bill, it could significantly reduce "UNSW's financial difficulties — and therefore the number of job losses we have to consider".
Professor Jacobs, who along with other senior managers will take a 20 per cent pay cut, acknowledged it was a "big ask" for staff to volunteer to work the same hours for less money in return for additional leave.
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Job ads collapse as one in five workers lose their income in a month
By Shane Wright
April 16, 2020 — 12.00am
The Australian jobs market is in free fall, with a collapse in the number of positions vacant across every industry and claims up to one in five people have already lost their income as the coronavirus pandemic shuts down the economy.
Ahead of Thursday's release of the March jobs report, which is expected to show one of the biggest monthly increases in unemployment on record, special analysis of job advertisements by online search company Indeed points to the trouble facing at-risk workers and those hoping for employment.
Ads for jobs are now more than 50 per cent down on the same time last year, with the collapse starting in mid-March when Australians were warned not to travel overseas and public gatherings of more than 500 were banned.
Even before those key announcements, advertisements were running behind the same period in February last year. But the gap widened especially as social distancing restrictions and travel bans were put in place.
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Jobless rate of 5.2pc fails to reflect coronavirus damage
Australia’s unemployment rate edged higher to 5.2 per cent in March, as the ABS official household survey conducted over the first half of that month failed to capture the initial wave of job losses resulting from the COVID-19 health crisis and the associated measures to slow its spread.
The unemployment rate was 5.1 per cent in February, according to the seasonally-adjusted figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
There were 5900 jobs added during the month.
The participation rate was steady at 66 per cent. Underemployment - those who have jobs but would like to work more - moved from 8.7 per cent to 8.8 per cent.
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Brace for economic data from corona meteorite
We are about to enter a new phase in the coronavirus pandemic. Up to this point the only data we’ve had to measure the impact of the coronavirus has been the daily counts of infections, recoveries and deaths.
But from next week, other metrics will be steadily released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
On Tuesday the ABS website (abs.gov.au) will upload a seemingly innocuous document called Labour Force Australia. There is nothing unusual about this upload; it happens about this time every month.
However, the reason why this particular upload is different, and why it symbolises a shift in the pandemic’s phases, is that it will deliver figures that will crack the air like thunder and reverberate across the continent.
That figure is the unemployment rate at March 31.
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JobKeeper: IMF corrects Frydenberg
Apr 16, 2020 – 6.25pm
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's claim that the government's $130 billion JobKeeper wage subsidies were not taken into account in the International Monetary Fund's grim economic forecasts has been challenged by the IMF.
The IMF mission chief for Australia, Harald Finger, confirmed the wage subsidies were factored into its forecast for the economy to shrink 6.7 per cent this year – the worst downturn since the Great Depression in 1931.
"Our projections for Australia take into consideration the large and beneficial JobKeeper program together with other announced, supportive policy measures, which are mitigating the negative economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis and can facilitate a faster recovery once the economic disruption from necessary containment measures eases," Mr Finger said in a statement.
"That said, we have to realise that there is very high uncertainty with respect to any economic forecasts at this stage given the uncertain trajectory of the virus."
The government will write a please explain letter to the IMF because government economic officials believe there had not been enough time to fully factor in the wage subsidies.
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'D-Day' for super funds given five-day payments deadline
By Charlotte Grieve
April 16, 2020 — 5.12pm
Super funds have five days to pay out members who want to access to their retirement savings early, according to new guidelines released by the prudential regulator, as the sector braces for a raid on balances starting next week.
The peak body representing industry fund trustees has slammed the deadline set on Thursday as "incredibly short" raising the potential for identity fraud as access to the scheme is based on self-approval process with little paper work through the Australian Tax Office.
Eva Scheerlinck, chief executive of Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, said funds were comfortable meeting tight deadlines, such as the two-day turnaround for people wanting to switch funds, but the early access scheme was different. "Those queries don't come in at potentially thousands all at the same time," she said.
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The real story of nation's virus-infected jobs market not clear - yet
By Shane Wright
April 16, 2020 — 4.11pm
Not even the Morrison government believes the March job figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Hamstrung by its own survey system, the bureau's report that there was an increase in both the number of jobs and number of hours worked through March was dismissed as soon as it was released by senior members of the government and economists.
The survey was carried out between March 1 and 14. In terms of the coronavirus pandemic, that's about three lifetimes ago.
Australians could still gather in crowds of more than 500. People were going to restaurants for a meal with friends. L-platers could safely drive with their parents without fear of being pulled over by the police.
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Coronavirus: Student exodus adds to rental woes
Accommodation vacancies have surged across Australia after a growing exodus of foreign students and workers, prompting warnings that rents and house prices will come under severe pressure this year as the economy enters a major downturn.
Data provided to The Australian by REA Group show the number of “furnished listings” have more than doubled to 2207 from early March to early April. Nerida Conisbee, its chief economist, said the exodus of people from Australia was having an “immediate impact” on the housing market.
On Thursday, the Australian revealed the population could fall by the largest absolute amount ever in the nation’s history as up to 600,000 temporary migrants, mainly students and foreign workers, returned home amid the corona virus crisis.
“With fewer foreign students, rental properties close to universities are becoming increasingly vacant, which is being compounded by many Australian university students moving back home with parents,” Ms Conisbee said.
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Health Issues.
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No entries this week.
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International Issues.
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'I owe them my life': Boris Johnson thanks hospital staff
April 12, 2020 — 4.47pm
London: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thanked staff at a London hospital for taking care of him while he recovers from COVID-19.
"I can't thank them enough. I owe them my life," Johnson said in a brief statement issued late on Saturday, local time.
The 55-year-old conservative politician, who was hospitalised last Sunday running a high fever, spent three days in the intensive care unit at St Thomas' Hospital after his health deteriorated.
He was moved back to a normal ward on Thursday. When the Prime Minister will be able to return to work remains unclear.
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'Rolling reentry' of US economy possible in May
Apr 13, 2020 – 7.58am
Washington | The United States' top infectious disease expert said Sunday that the economy in parts of the country could have a "rolling reentry" as early as next month, provided health authorities can quickly identify and isolate people who will inevitably be infected with the coronavirus.
Dr Anthony Fauci also said he "can't guarantee" that it will be safe for Americans to vote in person on Election Day, November 3.
Rather than flipping a switch to reopen the entire country, Fauci said a gradual process will be required based on the status of the pandemic in various parts of the US and the availability of rapid, widespread testing.
Once the number of people who are seriously ill sharply declines, officials can begin to "think about a gradual reentry of some sort of normality, some rolling reentry," Fauci said.
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Oil price war ends with historic OPEC Plus deal to cut output
Javier Blas, Salma El Wardany and Grant Smith
Apr 13, 2020 – 7.32am
The world's top oil producers have pulled off a historic deal to cut global petroleum output by nearly a 10th, putting an end to the devastating price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia.
After a week-long marathon of bilateral calls and four days of video conferences with government ministers from around the world – including the OPEC Plus alliance and the Group of 20 nations – an agreement finally emerged to tackle the impact of the global pandemic on demand.
The talks almost fell apart because of resistance from Mexico, but it came back from the brink after a weekend of urgent diplomacy, including the personal intervention of President Donald Trump, who helped broker the solution.
"Unprecedented measures for unprecedented times,"said Ed Morse, a veteran oil watcher who is head of commodities research at Citigroup. "Unprecedented in historical discussions of production cuts, the US played a critical role in brokering between Saudi Arabia and Russia for the new OPEC Plus accord."
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Earlier shutdown would have saved lives: US infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci
By Latika Bourke
April 13, 2020 — 7.24am
As questions mount why the US didn't act sooner to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the White House's infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci has confirmed there was "a lot of push back" against proposals to shut the US down in the third week of February.
The US has recorded more than 21,000 deaths and more than half a million cases of infection - more than any country in the world.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that President Donald Trump ignored advice to recommend strict social distancing in late February because of the damage it would do to the US economy.
Fauci told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, local time, that lives could have been saved if aggressive social distancing had been adopted earlier, instead of in mid-March, when the President finally agreed to the measures.
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US deaths seen reaching 68,000 by early August
Apr 14, 2020 – 7.00am
The latest projections from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation point to a near tripling in the total number of US deaths to 68,841 by August 4 - the epidemic's first wave.
The US now has more than 572,000 confirmed cases and more than 23,000 reported deaths, according to the latest Johns Hopkins University data.
There are now more than 1.9 million confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus around the world, with more than 118,000 people having died because of it, according to the university's tally.
The predicted peak for daily deaths in the US could be today, the IHME said, "reaching 2150 deaths (estimate range of 464 to 7084).
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Coronavirus and the threat to US supremacy
COVID-19 has targeted America’s weaknesses, while making many of its strengths temporarily irrelevant.
Apr 14, 2020 – 9.46am
At the height of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan argued that rivalries between nations would vanish if the world was invaded by aliens. The former US president was too optimistic. Today, the US and China are facing a common threat in the form of coronavirus. Far from uniting these two rivals, the pandemic seems to be intensifying their competition.
You can see why China might sniff an opportunity in this crisis. Coronavirus has targeted America’s weaknesses, while making many of its strengths temporarily irrelevant. The world’s most powerful military machine is not much use against a virus. But a lack of universal healthcare coverage is suddenly a threat not just to the poor but to the whole of US society.
The American economic and political systems are both reeling. One in 10 US workers has lost their job inside three weeks. Both Republicans and Democrats suspect the other side will use the pandemic to try to rig the upcoming presidential election. Paul Krugman, the economist and columnist, argued recently that American democracy itself is in danger.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government claims it has almost completely suppressed domestic transmission of the virus. Combine the relative stabilisation of China with the threat of a new Great Depression and a deep political crisis in America, and it is clearly possible that COVID-19 will trigger a big shift in power from the US to China. It could even mark the end of American primacy.
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New Zealand lockdown rules should be relaxed, local health experts say
By Virginia Fallon
April 14, 2020 — 11.01am
Wellington: A group of public health experts has broken ranks on the Jacinda Ardern's lockdown strategy, calling for a return to near-normal life in two weeks.
As the number of new coronavirus cases continue to drop, the group of academics said the Government's lockdown plan is out of proportion with the health risks posed by the virus.
The group said that from 22 April, when the current lockdown period is due to end, New Zealand should drop to "level two" alert.
This would leave Kiwis free to return to work, most schools and universities and businesses would re-open, and leisure activities and domestic travel would resume.
Restrictions on overseas travel restrictions and gathering on more than 100 people would remain under their plan, titled "Plan b".
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The GFC was just a dry run for this catastrophe
There will be no return to economic normalcy until a vaccine is available, so the only question is how long and bad the inevitable deep recession will be.
Apr 14, 2020 – 3.00pm
With each passing day, the 2008 global financial crisis increasingly looks like a mere dry run for today’s economic catastrophe.
The short-term collapse in global output now being experienced already seems likely to rival or exceed that of any recession of the past 150 years.
Even with all-out efforts by central banks and fiscal authorities to soften the blow, asset markets in advanced economies have cratered, and capital has been pouring out of emerging markets at a breathtaking pace.
A deep economic slump and financial crisis are unavoidable.
The key questions now are how bad the recession will be and how long it will last.
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IMF predicts deep recession, V-shaped rebound
Apr 14, 2020 – 10.30pm
The International Monetary Fund is warning Australia's economy will shrink a massive 6.7 per cent this year due to coronavirus containment measures slamming business activity and inflicting the world's worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
After the sharp recession, the IMF predicts a V-shaped rebound of 6.1 per cent next year if the global pandemic peaks in the next three months and social distancing restrictions ease in the second half of this year.
But even the strong recovery envisaged in 2021 would leave annual economic output smaller than in 2019 and the jobless rate elevated at 9 per cent next year, according to the fund.
IMF mission chief for Australia, Harald Finger, said Australia was "entering its first recession in nearly 30 years".
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JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo profits tumble as banks brace for recession
· The Wall Street Journal
Big US banks have sent a clear message in first-quarter earnings: this recession is going to be bad.
JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have set aside billions of additional dollars to get ready for a flood of customers to default on their loans as the coronavirus pandemic pummels the economy. That sank the banks’ quarterly profits.
JPMorgan and Wells Fargo are the first big US banks to report first-quarter results, and act as a bellwether for the broader economy. Neither bank has yet seen a wave of loans go bad, but they are preparing for it as the economy plunges further into a presumed recession and millions remain out of work.
Many Americans were already deep in debt before the pandemic, tapping credit cards, auto loans and student loans at record levels to cover a shortfall left by wages that remained flat for many years.
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A microbe has overthrown all our arrogance
We must remember above all that in a pandemic, no country is an island. We do not know the future. But we do know how we should try to shape it.
Apr 15, 2020 – 11.09am
In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF calls what is now happening the "Great Lockdown". I prefer the "Great Shutdown": this phrase captures the reality that the global economy would be collapsing even if policymakers were not imposing lockdowns and might stay in collapse after lockdowns end.
Yet, whatever we call it, this is clear: it is the biggest crisis the world has confronted since the Second World War and the biggest economic disaster since the Depression of the 1930s.
The world has come into this moment with divisions among its great powers and incompetence at the highest levels of government of terrifying proportions. We will pass through this, but into what?
As recently as January, the IMF had no idea of what was about to hit, partly because Chinese officials had failed to inform one another, let alone the rest of the world.
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Bill Gates calls WHO funding cut 'as dangerous as it sounds'
Timothy Bella
Apr 16, 2020 – 7.19am
Washington | Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has criticised President Donald Trump's decision to suspend funding to the World Health Organisation as "dangerous", saying the payments should continue particularly during the global coronavirus pandemic.
"Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds," Gates tweeted early Wednesday. "Their work is slowing the spread of covid-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them. The world needs @WHO now more than ever."
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US protest for people 'sick and tired' of coronavirus lockdown
By Mike Householder
April 16, 2020 — 10.10am
Lansing: Hundreds of flag-waving, honking protesters have shown their displeasure with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer's orders to keep people at home and businesses locked during the coronavirus outbreak.
As snow fell, some got out of their vehicles and raised signs, one of which read, "Gov. Whitmer We Are Not Prisoners."
The "Operation Gridlock" protest was organised by the Michigan Conservative Coalition.
"This arbitrary blanket spread of shutting down businesses, about putting all of these workers out of business, is just a disaster. It's an economic disaster for Michigan," coalition member Meshawn Maddock said. "And people are sick and tired of it."
Whitmer, a Democrat, extended a stay-home order until April 30 and has shut down schools and businesses deemed non-essential.
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UQ-developed sewage test could reveal virus hot spots
By Stuart Layt
Updated April 16, 2020 — 10.47amfirst published at 9.20am
It could soon be possible to identify hot spots of coronavirus in the community as they occur by testing the levels of the virus in sewage.
Researchers from the University of Queensland and the CSIRO have developed a proof-of-concept method showing they can detect the virus in wastewater.
Director of UQ’s Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences, Professor Kevin Thomas, says the proposed method would give a real-time snapshot of how many people in a given community have the disease.
“It can tell us whether COVID-19 has infected a community at a relatively early stage,” Professor Thomas said.
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Delusional: Investors are underestimating the economic shock the world is facing
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
April 16, 2020 — 11.10am
Investors are repeating the mistake they made all through February and early March. They are again underestimating the immense economic shock of COVID-19.
Can there be any parallel in market history to the surreal clash of narratives we saw this week? Global bourses soared even as the International Monetary Fund painted a series of scenarios ranging from dire - the most violent slump since the Great Depression - to catastrophic, with all the potential chain-reactions spelt out in its Global Financial Stability Report.
Yet Goldman Sachs tells us that COVID-19 is under control and the worst is over. "The number of new active cases looks to be peaking globally, projections of cumulative fatalities and peak healthcare usage are coming down," it says.
From this breathtaking premise, Wall Street's fashion leader argues that we should "look through" the Great Lockdown to sunlit uplands ahead, anticipating a further 8 per cent rise in the S&P 500 index by the end of the year.
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'Whatever it takes': Money is losing its meaning during the pandemic
By Jared Dillian
April 16, 2020 — 10.10am
Doing "whatever it takes" to save the global economy from the coronavirus pandemic is going to cost a lot of money. The US government alone is spending a few trillion dollars, and the Federal Reserve is creating another few trillion dollars to keep the financial system from collapsing.
A custom Bloomberg index measuring M2 figures for 12 major economies including the US, China, euro zone and Japan shows their aggregate money supply had already more than doubled to $US80 trillion from before the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
These numbers are so large that they no longer have any meaning; they are simply abstractions. It's been some time since people thought about the concept of money and its purpose. The broad idea is that money has value, but that value is not arbitrary. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker once said in an interview that "it is a governmental responsibility to maintain the value of the currency they issue. And when they fail to do that, it is something that undermines an essential trust in government."
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China’s gross domestic product falls for first time on record
China’s economic output plummeted 6.8 per cent in the first three months of the year compared with a year earlier, the country’s first such drop since Beijing began reporting quarterly gross domestic product in 1992.
The sharp contraction in the world’s second-largest economy offers a foreshadowing of the pain expected in the US and around the world as the coronavirus pandemic shuts borders, halts business activity and cripples global supply chains.
China’s 6.8 per cent year-over-year pullback follows a 6 per cent gain in the last three months of 2019 but is better than the 8.3 per cent decline predicted by the median forecast of 15 economists polled by The Wall Street Journal.
Compared with the fourth quarter of 2019, China’s GDP contracted by 9.8 per cent. The underlying picture offered some signs of recovery after the economy hit a nadir in February, though the numbers underscored the weakness of consumer spending.
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Coronavirus: the big flaw in Donald Trump’s pandemic recovery blueprint
Donald Trump’s new guidelines to reopen the US economy have a fundamental flaw — not enough Americans are being tested to give them confidence that it is safe to tiptoe back into the normal world.
From the start of this pandemic, the US has lagged the industrialised world in testing its population for the caronavirus, even as the disease has spread like a bushfire across the country.
Trump wants to re-open the country as quickly as possible in a phased manner, but the chronic failure of the country’s testing regime has made returning to work especially perilous for many Americans. He is asking people to resume their normal lives without having the basic information necessary for them to safely make that decision, including a knowledge of how many people are infected in their region or what the spread rate is like. Widespread testing is needed to paint this picture yet, remarkably, Trump’s new federal guidelines for a staged reopening of the economy do not contain a national testing strategy.
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America struggles with an impossible decision
Apr 17, 2020 – 12.14pm
Washington | In 14th century Europe cats were slaughtered during Black Death pandemics because they were considered the spawn of Satan.
The result was an explosion in rat populations - a vector of the virus - that ended up making subsequent waves of the disease even more catastrophic.
Historians quibble over details but when viewed as a parable on unexpected consequences, the great cat massacres are hugely relevant today as US leaders consider when and how to reopen the world's biggest economy as it teeters on the brink of lasting ruin.
These are nightmarish decisions. First, small errors can explode into devastating outcomes, the costs of which might be measured in lives and GDP lost for ever. Second, data-poor desperation is a terrible starting point from which to make decisions.
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Chapter 1: The Big Picture in a Tiny Nutshell
Published on April 2, 2020
Ray Dalio
Co-Chief Investment Officer & Co-Chairman of Bridgewater Associates, L.P.
As explained in the Introduction, the world order is now rapidly shifting in important ways that have never happened in our lifetimes but have happened many times before in history. My objective is to show you those cases and the mechanics that drove them and, with that perspective, attempt to imagine the future.
What follows here is an ultra-distilled description of the dynamics that I saw in studying the rises and declines of the last three reserve currency empires (the Dutch, the British, and the American) and the six other significant empires (Germany, France, Russia, India, Japan, and China) over the last 500 years, as well as all of the major Chinese dynasties back to the Tang Dynasty around the year 600. The purpose of this chapter is simply to provide an archetype to use when looking at all the cycles, most importantly the one that we are now in. In studying these past cases, I saw clear patterns that occurred for logical reasons that I briefly summarize here and cover more completely in subsequent chapters of Part 1. While the focus of this chapter and this book are on those forces that affected the big cyclical swings in wealth and power, I also saw ripple-effect patterns in all dimensions of life including culture and the arts, social mores, and more, which I will touch on in Part 2. By going back and forth between this simple archetype and the cases shown in Part 2, we will see how the individual cases fit the archetype (which is essentially just the average of those cases) and how well the archetype describes the individual cases. Doing this, I hope, will help us better understand what is happening now.
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Trump, at war with states over lockdowns, calls on people to rise up
By Matthew Knott
April 18, 2020 — 4.54am
Washington: A day after laying out a roadmap for reviving economic activity, US President Donald Trump has urged his supporters to "liberate" three Democrat-led states, effectively calling for protests against stay-at-home orders aimed at containing the coronavirus.
US President Donald Trump has issued his bold new plan to lift coronavirus restrictions and kick-start the economy in the US.
In a series of tweets, the President urged people in Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia to rise up and "liberate" themselves from restrictions.
He also hit out at New York's Governor Andrew Cuomo for criticising the federal response. Cuomo "should spend more time 'doing' and less time 'complaining,"' he said, adding: "Less talk and more action!"
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Coronavirus: More protesters push to ‘reopen America’
· AAP
Stores in Texas will soon begin selling merchandise with kerbside service, and hospitals can resume non-essential surgeries. In Florida, people are returning to beaches and parks. And protesters are clamouring for more.
Governors eager to rescue their economies and feeling heat from President Donald Trump are moving to ease restrictions meant to control the spread of the coronavirus, even as new hot spots emerge and experts warn that moving too fast could prove disastrous.
Adding to the pressure are protests against stay-at-home orders organised by small-government groups and Trump supporters. They staged demonstrations Saturday in several cities after the president urged them to “liberate” three states led by Democratic governors.
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As Spain limps out of lockdown, will it ever be the same again?
Apr 19, 2020 – 9.21am
London | David Gillison is an Aussie expat living in Madrid. For five weeks, he's been confined to his 55-square-metre studio flat. His tourism business has collapsed. He's fretful about his relatives back in Australia. But that's not all: he's worried about Spain itself.
The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted on Spain a staggering 20,043 deaths, 191,726 confirmed infections, and an untold number of undetected cases and fatalities in aged care homes and private residences.
The lockdown, probably Europe's harshest, has been necessary but costly: the International Monetary Fund is predicting an 8 per cent nosedive in GDP and a jobless rate of almost 21 per cent.
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I look forward to comments on all this!
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David.
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