This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Quote Of The Year
Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"
or
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
A coalition of major community organisations has called for urgent efforts to help the 2.5 million Australians not connected to the internet as the country turns to online education, remote work and telehealth during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, Australian Council of Social Service, Choice, Anglicare, Smith Family and almost 30 other groups have written to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher warning people without internet connections and technology face an "alarming escalation of the digital divide".
Praising the economic support packages announced by the government so far, the groups said more was needed for the many low income and remote households "who will remain isolated and struggle in these circumstances due to barriers in accessing communications services and equipment".
The pre-existing problem is heightened during the pandemic, the groups warned, hindering access to government services, children trying to undertake online education and people needing access to telehealth services.
The coalition called for "targeted low-cost broadband" connections for eligible households, a relief package of basic telecommunications equipment and a telephone service for people with low digital literacy.
They also urged the government to work with telcos on ensuring customers' ongoing access to adequate data, preventing disconnections during the crisis, suspending late fees and debt collection, addressing outages in remote communities and helping Telstra make their wifi-enabled payphones free.
As suggested, one can only suspect that this figure will rise as so many are loosing their job and will be lucky to be able to keep a phone with minimal data, let alone a fixed home internet connection that is needed for many activities.
Again COVID-19 totally dominates the news – while some other topics are being sadly ignored – think the wars in Yemen and Syria among others.
In the US the catastrophe in cases and deaths has arrived and sadly the USA has become a world beater in the worst possible ways. Trump has seriously underestimated this issue to say the least.
In the UK a full lockdown is now underway – led by an infected PM! A week of two yet before we know if it will make a real difference.
It is becoming clear we are facing a full blown calamity in the developing world – which may come back to bite us as we just manage to regain control a few months from now!
In OZ the incremental approach to control continues and we remain to see if it will work. Another week or two at least.
Shocked fund managers are busy planning how to navigate the sharemarket's historic collapse, while wondering how a supposedly efficient market got so wrong footed by COVID-19.
Ben Clark, a portfolio manager at TMS Capital, said the market had made the mistake of extrapolating prior health crises such as Ebola, Swine Flu, and SARS as a likely outcome for the approximate impact of COVID-19.
According to the fund manager, prior infectious outbreaks proved great buying opportunities – on the contrary to COVID-19.
"I don't think anyone expected it to be nearly as bad as it has been. The way governments are dealing with it has rapidly changed from even a week or two ago," he said.
Corporations watching revenue go to zero can't access capital from the usual places. It may be time to consider how the government steps in.
Mar 24, 2020 – 12.00am
It took only a few hours of trading on the ASX on Monday to suggest the government’s $66 billion stimulus package will not be enough to prevent the loss of a large numbers of jobs, very quickly.
It was little wonder the ASX 200 fell 5.6 per cent, and now sits 36 per cent below its February 20 peak. Investors are being forced to reassess just how far-reaching the pandemic shutdown is. And even if they can work that out, trying to estimate how long it lasts is impossible.
Avoid irrational decisions that will cost your SMSF
If you have enough cash flow to pay for living expenses over the short to medium term, current investment prices become irrelevant, because you're not selling.
Self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) members in accumulation and pension phase have found themselves on opposite sides of the table in terms of the impact of sharemarket plunges on their personal member balance. But what they do next should be quite similar.
Let’s first look at those in pension phase as they are most susceptible to making irrational and emotional decisions in these uncertain times, given the insecurity that comes from seeing retirement savings plunge in value. The first thing to address is what can be controlled – how much cash is available to fund living expenses.
Funding living expenses is the most important thing for most SMSF pension members, and having a clear line of sight of what that looks like in respect of your portfolio is critical.
The nation’s biggest investors, including AustralianSuper, IFM Investors, SunSuper and UniSuper, have booked billions of dollars in losses across their unlisted assets as the coronavirus crisis extends beyond equities and bond markets to wreak havoc on infrastructure.
The slide in infrastructure portfolio values, in the wake of a 30 per cent crash in equities markets and turmoil across bond and fixed income markets, further places pressure on the $3 trillion retirement savings sector, which is confronting a potential liquidity squeeze.
This includes a cash hit as customers switch retirement savings out of balanced options and into cash, and the prospect of lower inflows as workers are laid off and contributions dry up.
At the same time, funds face an expected $30bn in early drawdowns as part of the government’s hardship measures outlined on Sunday that influential consultancy SuperRatings has warned could result in some funds “freezing” assets.
Four things you need to know now about the economy and markets
A very tough path lies ahead, and it will inevitably lead to more economic and financial damage.
Mohamed A. El-Erian
Mar 27, 2020 – 5.47am
With the announcement of sweeping monetary and fiscal emergency measures, the US economy and global markets have avoided - at least for now - racing to a truly nasty place.
That's the good news. But neither is out of the woods.
A very tough path lies ahead, and it will inevitably lead to more economic and financial damage and require constant policy vigilance and responsive agility.
Here are the four main things you need to know at this stage of what is a generation-defining economic and financial shock caused by the coronavirus:
Gold's haven status has been burnished amid heightened economic and market uncertainty, and as budget deficits deepen as trillions of dollars are thrown at the hole ripped into global growth by the coronavirus.
Investors bunkered down as the gathering economic storm descended on companies, forcing them into survival mode by shutting up shop, laying off employees, and delaying dividends and buybacks.
In a week no investor is bound to forget, it’s not just that your super savings have taken a hit. The super system virtually every Australian has used for long-term savings has been rapidly redesigned and it will never be the same again.
Three key developments have taken place. First, the concept of super money locked away until retirement is broken. The government decision to allow “early access” to super on a universal basis breaks a long-standing pact that this would never happen. As a generation of younger workers are going to find out when it comes to compounding returns — you can’t get the “time in market” back if you cash out early.
Second, the investment scenario has swung back hugely in favour of self-managed super funds. Petrified by the global financial crisis, many of these SMSFs hoarded cash and missed out as the market moved higher. Now this army of more than one million accidental “value investors” have the markets at their feet.
Third, the union-linked industry funds are going to be tested well beyond the predictable hurdles of liquidity or hedging that a major market crisis will invariably trigger.
A critical moment in the life of our nation is approaching. Australians need to react.
Last week we introduced the grim logic that we must now face collectively. On current trends of the COVID outbreak, Australia's medical infrastructure will be overwhelmed. This will happen soon.
Too much has been made of Australia managing well in relative terms. In absolute terms we are facing a national catastrophe.
There have also been too many words, and not enough numbers.
Two major miscalculations about COVID-19 have had cascading effects in shaping how governments around the world grapple with a once-in-a-century pandemic.
The first mistake was to underestimate the number of younger people who will die from the novel coronavirus; the second, discovered by the Imperial College research team in the UK, was to underestimate the number of COVID-19 patients who will need to be hospitalised.
The first mistake was to underestimate the number of younger people who will die from coronavirus; the second mistake, discovered by the Imperial College research team in the UK, was to underestimate the number of patients who will need to be hospitalised.
The policy considerations that flow from these mistakes are complex. It is the difference between the UK’s initial mitigation policy, that sought to protect the elderly but let the virus sweep through the rest of the population – “a nice big epidemic” as UK government’s scientific adviser Professor Graham Medley put it; and more drastic steps for immediate containment, which the Imperial College team advocates in a hastily reworked report released last Monday.
If we want capitalism and liberal democracy to survive COVID-19, we cannot afford to repeat the mistaken 'socialise the losses, privatise the gains' approach used a decade ago.
Updated Mar 23, 2020 – 10.44am, first published at 10.23am
In the previous crisis, Washington bailed out banks. Today, it’s about to bail out big business.
The corporate sector looks a lot like the financial sector did pre-2008: debt-laden, with some sectors highly leveraged, and most of them reliant on financial engineering to create the illusion of growth and innovation.
American companies used to reinvest their earnings to boost productive capacity. Now, they mostly generate “value” by downsizing and distributing money to the richest in the US.
The question, now that the entire economy is collapsing at once, is who will be first in line to get bailed out?
The fundamental problem all along has been that Canberra and its medical advisers have been reacting to an "evolving" situation without looking ahead to what was inevitably coming.
Australian governments and their medical advisers are finally realising this extraordinary health crisis requires far more extraordinary measures than they were contemplating even last Friday.
The overdue change of approach means that not only is the Morrison government’s latest emergency $66 billion economic package massive relative to anything that has gone before.
It is still only another modest downpayment on the required financial support to come to manage a public health disaster.
Particularly given the imminent shutdown of other than non-essential retail services in Australia's two largest economies, the package is already out of date.
Home-schooling might seem daunting. These are some tools parents can use
By Jodie Torrington
March 22, 2020 — 8.00pm
Having to home-school your young child is a daunting prospect for many parents. Thoughts of “How do I keep them busy? Are they going to be glued to a computer all day?” will be common as parents monitor their children's learning during coronavirus-related school closures.
The need for parents to come up with learning activities should be minimal. Teachers can make instructional videos that students can find on Google Classroom, Office365 and Edmodo and live video chats allow teachers to check in with students and clarify information.
This could, however, become a rare opportunity to have close input into your child’s learning. Learning using technology doesn’t mean sticking your kid in front of a computer all day. Helping your child self-regulate their learning at home is crucial.
Medibank chief executive Craig Drummond says reform of the private health sector will have to wait as all parts of the health system mobilise to confront an unprecedented crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The nation's largest private health insurer has been battered in recent times by the industry-wide trends of rising hospital claim costs and an exodus of young members - twin forces some warn have put the sector in a "death spiral".
Drummond was preparing to spend 2020 tackling these challenges by pushing for regulatory reform while evolving his own business from a simple payer of bills to being a provider of medical services.
But he says much of his reform agenda will now take a back seat. "There will be challenges, depending on the numbers, around [intensive care unit] capacity, ventilator capacity and all those types of issues," says Drummond, who has lead the $7 billion ASX listed health fund since 2016.
Real-time data show virus hit to global economic activity
To make up for the lack of official information, the FT has compiled a set of alternative, high-frequency measures for different sectors which give an early indication of what to expect when official data start to become available in the coming weeks.
Valentina Romei and John Burn-Murdoch
Updated Mar 23, 2020 – 11.26am, first published at 11.24am
Restaurants, cinemas and shops around the world have emptied, while flights, road traffic and energy use have fallen steeply, according to an FT analysis which gives a first glimpse of the impact of coronavirus on the global economy.
A group of former IMF chief economists warned last weekend that a global recession had already begun, but although economic activity is slowing sharply, much official data are out of date before they are even published, given the time they take to collate.
To make up for the lack of official information, the FT has compiled a set of alternative, high-frequency measures of economic activity for different sectors which give an early indication of what to expect when official data start to become available in the coming weeks.
They show that vehicular traffic has at least halved in many of the world’s largest cities, spending in restaurants has halted and cinemas sales have collapsed. The effects began to be felt even before nationwide lockdowns were implemented across parts of Europe and the US.
A group of leading doctors has warned Aussies the coronavirus is already “out of control” and to start isolating themselves or face serious consequences.
Medical leaders including the Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Journal of Australia and the president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) have pleaded for Australians to urgently self-isolate to stop more deaths from the coronavirus in a video shared online yesterday.
Dr Andrew Miller, the president and federal councillor of the AMA said he was calling on the government and people of Australia to “jump on the brakes”.
“This virus is out of control and we’ve really got to stop it to avoid a lot of unnecessary deaths,” Dr Miller said on Sunday.
He warned that people in the community and health care workers are all at risk of being killed by the virus. He urged a comprehensive lockdown imposed by the government until the virus can be brought under control.
“This is the people’s money and this is the time they need it most,” Josh Frydenberg declared last weekend, signalling the government would allow households severely affected by the recession to access up to $20,000 of superannuation.
The super sector, expecting a much smaller sum, was blindsided. Treasury estimates up to $27bn of the $3 trillion savings stockpile could be withdrawn to help people meet their expenses.
The Treasurer has made the right decision — leaning on super is better than resorting to yet more debt and, later, taxation to help prop up the economy in a crisis. And a brave one, too, given the sector, especially the union-backed industry funds, is probably the most powerful vested interest in the country.
He should go further and consider asking businesses to pay super contributions as wages until the end of the year. Super payments are remitted quarterly rather than monthly or fortnightly, but the payroll transformation is surely manageable, and definitely worth it.
At the risk of infuriating every aged person in Australia, asking them to self-isolate at home for a few months could go a long way to reducing the strain on hospitals.
The main focus of economists around the world at present is to assess the efficacy of fiscal and monetary policies in trying to limit the economic damage brought about by the COVID-19 virus (CV19).
Yet this focus is misplaced. Worrying about macro-stimulus now seems irrelevant given we are deliberately destroying our economy to slow the spread of CVI9.
As an economist, the real focus today should be whether the policies to mitigate the CV19 risks are as efficient as they could be. How can we “flatten the curve” without flattening the economy?
National cabinet shows multiple failings at all levels
Behind the facade of high-level consultations among state and federal leaders, there are growing disagreements on everything from schools to travel bans. No wonder the public is confused.
Scott Morrison can no doubt ignore the NSW Premier’s “strong advice” for parents to keep their children at home if possible, given the Prime Minister’s belief that going to school remains the best and safest option. But that dispute is just one aspect of much deeper divisions between the states and the federal government behind the facade of the national cabinet.
The decisions by the Andrews government in Victoria and the Berejiklian government in NSW to make their own announcements on Sunday about the shutdown of non-essential services was a remarkably public example of the extent of disagreement. In private, the division is starkest in the constant arguments the NSW Coalition government is having with Canberra about how best to respond to the coronavirus.
It wasn’t until the national cabinet meeting on Sunday evening that an alarmed Prime Minister, backed by the other states, was able to persuade Glady Berejiklian and Daniel Andrews to agree to a more limited and nationally uniform approach on business closures. This was to apply the new restrictions to specific parts of the retail economy like bars, restaurants, cinemas and gyms, rather than an undefined ban on all “non- essential” services.
The coronavirus outbreak has reached a new level and ever more "aggressive" tactics are required to combat it, the head of the World Health Organisation said.
"More than 300,000 cases of #COVID19 have now been reported to WHO, from almost every country in the world. The pandemic is accelerating.
"It took 67 days from the 1st reported case to reach the first 100K cases, 11 days for the second 100K & just 4 days for the third 100K."
In a series of tweets, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in his daily briefing that asking people to stay at home and other social distancing measures are important to slow the spread of the virus, however these are defensive.
Patients in their 40s and 50s are among those seriously ill in Sydney's COVID-19 intensive care units, increasing fears from health professionals that younger Australians are not heeding the health warnings that could protect them and the most vulnerable.
To individuals ignoring public health directives, the plight of these patients and their families is a sobering reminder that the coronavirus does not spare the relatively young, as the NSW government shuts down "non-essential" services and asks parents to keep children at home.
New South Wales parents are being urged to keep their children at home, even though schools will remain open.
On Tuesday morning Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant reported 149 new confirmed coronavirus cases within the previous 24 hours, the biggest jump to date, that took the state's total to 818.
Columnist and visiting research associate at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
March 23, 2020 — 12.20pm
It takes a pandemic to break a fever.
The US is slowly shutting down, while its government is slowly – much too slowly – ramping up. For 40 years, the message that government is the problem, not the solution, has been etched on the soul of both major parties. But as COVID-19 kneecaps social and economic life, the need for urgent, massive government action has become painfully clear to Democrats and Republicans alike.
Driving through iconic New York City reveals empty sidewalks Monday as resident and tourists alike heed the state order to stay home amid COVID-19.
While it's not yet certain whether the lessons of this crisis will stick – federal politicians spent the last decade deregulating finance again once the global financial crisis passed – the lessons themselves are clear. A nation where half the populace has rejected social safety nets, expertise and reality-based information has buckled under the pandemic threat. The only way out is to jettison that mode of politics and the quicker, the better.
Australia is on the brink of hitting 2000 coronavirus cases, amid dire international warnings that the pandemic is accelerating and more testing must be done.
Tracey Ferrier
Australian Associated Press March 24, 202010:02am
Australia's coronavirus tally could hit 2000 cases by the end of the day as authorities develop new rules about who can get tested.
NSW and Victoria reported 205 new cases on Tuesday morning, taking the national tally to 1914. Australia's death toll stands at seven, all but one in NSW.
Other states are yet to add their new cases. They include Queensland which recorded 60 fresh positive results on Monday - it's highest daily increase so far.
The World Health Organisation warned overnight that the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating, with more than 300,000 cases now confirmed and thousand upon thousands of deaths.
If you suddenly lose your sense of smell, you may be showing an early sign of coronavirus, according to medical specialists.
Ear, nose and throat surgeons say the virus causes swelling in the olfactory mucosa, which causes a loss of smell. The sign could be used as a key clinical indicator in otherwise symptom-free carriers of COVID-19.
As cases in Australia rose to 1887, with a rise of 149 in NSW alone, early detection, and detection in otherwise symptom free carriers is becoming increasingly urgent.
“It is these silent carriers who may remain undetected by current screening procedures, which may explain why the disease has progressed so rapidly in so many countries around the world,” Flinders University professor and ENT specialist Simon Carney said.
“While further research is required, loss of smell, or anosmia, has been reported in as many as one in three patients in South Korea and in Germany, this figure was as high as one in two.”
Australian medical experts say the rate of new coronavirus infections should begin to slow within a month after the federal and state governments ordered the closure of clubs, pubs, gyms and cinemas.
The stage one restrictions introduced from midday on Monday were endorsed as “entirely appropriate” and “proportionate” to the rapidly increasing number of coronavirus cases across the country.
Indoor sporting and entertainment venues, casinos and nightclubs were closed, while restaurants and cafes can only do takeaway or home delivery.
“My current belief is we will see increasing numbers over the next few weeks, mainly because of return (overseas traveller) numbers,” Australian National University medical school professor Peter Collignon said.
The long lines outside Centrelink offices offer one grim benefit. They have galvanised the entire country into registering the sudden financial devastation facing hundreds of thousands of people, soon to be millions, all over Australia.
That puts into dismal perspective the inadequacy of the government’s economic support packages, no matter how unprecedented, as well as its preparation for the scale of a spiralling health crisis that is inevitably producing a runaway economic emergency.
It is only now, for example, the government has decided it is no longer necessary for new applicants for financial support to initially present themselves in person at Centrelink to verify their identities. Only now that the Minister for Government Services, Stuart Robert, has realised it was necessary to so dramatically increase the ability of the technology to cope with the unprecedented numbers of people trying to go online to get help.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the ruinous economic impact of the coronavirus, as well as the virus itself, was now putting lives at risk as he reluctantly ordered the closure of more businesses and public gatherings, throwing thousands more workers onto the dole queue.
Businesses and activities which must close or cease from midnight Wednesday range from house auctions and open inspections, to nail salons and almost every other personal service provider except hairdressers and barbers.
Following a meeting of the national cabinet on Tuesday night, Mr Morrison also announced an official ban on travelling overseas other than for essential reasons such as work, delivering aid or compassionate grounds.
Weddings will be restricted to five people - the couple, the celebrant and witnesses - and a maximum of 10 people per funeral will be permitted.
While a surge in case numbers is widely expected, some say Australia will also suffer as many severe cases and deaths as the UK. But others say current numbers suggest the death rate could be significantly lower.
"I believe we are in the lull before the storm," said Associate Professor David Heslop from the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of NSW.
"Compared to the UK, we are comparatively earlier in the epidemic curve and there is delay between case diagnosis and deaths. This is in the order of weeks and our mortality data is yet to catch up with our case counts.
Superannuation investors face losing between 10 and 15 per cent of their savings as $290 billion was wiped off the value of balances in the first weeks of the coronavirus downturn.
Further losses are expected from members raiding their savings under the government’s early access scheme.
The pandemic-driven pushback against globalisation will come initially from protectionists and national-security hawks. But it will gather force as it merges with other political currents that were gaining strength before.
Updated Mar 24, 2020 – 10.43am, first published at 10.42am
Kenichi Ohmae’s book TheBorderless World was published in 1990, the year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It became one of the classic texts of the globalisation era. But borders are now returning with a vengeance – driven by coronavirus.
When the pandemic passes, the most extreme barriers to travel will be lifted. But it is unlikely that there will be a full restoration of the globalised world, as it existed before COVID-19. The nation-state is making a comeback, fuelled by this extraordinary crisis.
There are three main reasons for this. First, the pandemic is demonstrating that in times of emergency people fall back on the nation-state – which has financial, organisational and emotional strengths that global institutions lack. Second, the disease is revealing the fragility of global supply chains.
The US sharemarket soared overnight, the biggest one-day surge in more than a decade. Does that mean that the worst, for markets at least, is over?
It is worth noting that the big bounce that provides the reference point for what happened on Wall Street on Tuesday occurred in October 2008 – about a month after Lehman brothers collapsed an precipitated the global financial crisis.
The market subsequently fell another 40 per cent or so before it bottomed in March 2009 and began the remarkable bull run that ended last month as the coronavirus emerged and created havoc.
The US market, and the other overseas markets that also soared, were responding to the news that the $US2 trillion ($3.4 trillion) "stimulus" package that had been stalled within Congress appeared to be on the verge of approval.
Updated Mar 26, 2020 – 2.00am, first published at Mar 25, 2020 – 11.09pm
London | Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, has tested positive for the coronavirus and is self-isolating at the royal family's Scottish estate Balmoral.
The 71-year-old is showing mild symptoms of COVID-19, though his wife Camilla is asymptomatic and the Queen, whom he last saw on March 12, "remains in good health", according to statements from the royals.
It's unclear how he got the virus or how many people he may have passed it onto, given what his officials described as "the high number of engagements he carried out in his public roles during recent weeks".
The chair of an academic advisory group which had its recommended strategy to curb COVID-19 rejected by the federal government says there is no perfect solution to the pandemic and those in power should be trusted to make hard decisions during the unprecedented crisis.
A 22-member team from the Group of Eight universities called for a rapid, sweeping and costly lockdown to pave the way for a national recovery once the crisis abates, having been convened following a request from Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy.
Senior medical academic Shitij Kapur says government decision makers face a complex and unprecedented task.
The government has been criticised for resisting the more hardline lockdown and on Tuesday Professor Murphy said the Group of Eight advice was "very seriously considered" but noted the conclusions were not unanimous and the government wanted measures that would be sustainable long-term. He said "harder measures" might be required if community transmission increased.
Huge numbers of Australian retailers will shut their doors this week as pressures from the coronavirus on their businesses continue to mount, with a raft of major companies announcing mass store closures on Thursday.
Retail veteran Solomon Lew's Premier Investments told investors it had "no choice" but to temporarily close all of its retail stores until April 22, standing down over 9000 staff worldwide bar a small number of head office employees.
The company will also stand down its entire executive team, which will work from home during the period for either no pay or reduced leave entitlements.
Premier intends to pay no rent across any of its stores during the period, continuing the company's hardline stance against landlords. Seventy per cent of its store leases either expire this year or are in holdover, providing the company with "extraordinary" flexibility.
Leaders can still build our trust to fight the virus - here's how
By Julie Leask
March 26, 2020 — 10.16am
To get through this pandemic with deaths prevented and civil society intact, the government will need an unprecedented level of trust and co-operation. Right now, trust is on a knife edge caused by early communication problems and opaque decision processes, along with the uncertainty of the pandemic.
There is still time to build public trust. Any leader communicating about COVID-19 can adopt some concrete strategies that will help to bring people along.
First, competent and skilled communicators show and model empathy. This is largely missing from the Prime Minister’s media conferences dominated by a castigating tone. On Sunday this escalated into him presenting ramped-up social-distancing measures as punishment instead of as contributions to public health.
‘Eerie similarities’ between Depression, virus crisis
In the second quarter of this year, output is expected to contract by 10 per cent — the same as it did in 1931, the first year of The Great Depression.
There are some eerie similarities between our grim economic outlook and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
JPMorgan reckons output will contract 10 per cent in the second quarter this year, about the same as it did in 1931 — the first year of the Depression.
In October 1929, equity prices fell about 40 per cent in a couple of months, not too much more than key indices have dropped globally in recent weeks.
That’s where the similarities end. The Depression was much worse than the serious trial we face today. It emerged as a result of the vicissitudes of the business cycle, a sudden collapse in global demand.
Countries that have locked down their populations to prevent the spread of coronavirus need to put a premium on finding new cases and doing everything they can "to suppress and control" the virus, the World Health Organisation says.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, said US President Donald Trump had displayed "political commitment" and "leadership" to fight the growing epidemic in the United States.
The WHO had warned on Tuesday the United States could become the global epicentre of the pandemic, as India announced a full 24-hour, nationwide lockdown in the world's second-most populous country.
Tedros, speaking at a news conference, also praised the "difficult but wise decision" taken on Tuesday to postpone the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, saying it aimed to safeguard the health of athletes and spectators.
At least 115 confirmed coronavirus cases acquired in Australia have no known source, leaving health authorities around the country scrambling to identify carriers who could be unknowingly transmitting the deadly infection.
This group, while only 4.4 per cent of Australia's 2613 confirmed cases as of 6.30am AEDT on Thursday, is currently the top concern for federal and state health departments. (This figure from early on Thursday provides a breakdown of the source of infections by state and territory cases.)
The sources of a further 432 confirmed cases were also under urgent investigation. The detailed contact tracing of this 16.5 per cent of cases is attempting to stop what Deputy Commonwealth chief medical officer Paul Kelly called "a disaster situation".
Professor Kelly said the infectiousness of COVID-19 is such that one sick person has the potential to lead to as many as 400 more people contracting the disease within a month, with strict social distancing, self-isolation and quarantine measures the only way to stop the spread.
In the blackest 24 hours for the retail sector in living memory, some of the biggest shopping mall chains in the country — including The Athlete’s Foot, Lovisa, Portmans, Just Jeans and Smiggle — have shut up shop, putting more than 15,000 staff out of work as the coronavirus pandemic swings like a wrecking ball through one of the economy’s biggest workforses.
Not waiting for the shopping centres and malls to go into lockdown, and wanting to preserve as much cash as possible to brave what could be months of hibernation as consumers are confined to their homes, shop owners have decided to turn once-vibrant shopping strips into wastelands.
The coronavirus pandemic is now a full-blown catastrophe for the nation’s $320bn retail industry and the 1.3 million Australians it employs — making it the second biggest pool of jobs in the nation after the healthcare sector.
Billionaire ragtrader Solomon Lew says he has never seen anything like it, and he has been a fixture of the Australian retail scene for 50 years. His Premier Investments owns fashion chains such as Smiggle, Portmans, Just Jeans and Peter Alexander.
Share markets turned bullish this week despite cascading news of increased measures to lock down the economy. The recovery could be complicated by Australia's record household debt.
Mar 28, 2020 – 12.00am
The combination of a health crisis and an economic crisis at the same time makes the coronavirus-induced recession unlike any other experienced in Australia over the past 100 years.
A myriad uncertainties about what will happen next as well as the weaknesses in critical infrastructure, particularly health and social security systems, mean the pathway to recovery is likely to be slow and painful.
There is far too much optimism in financial markets about the pace of the recovery in business profits despite the Prime Minister Scott Morrison warning the economy will be "frozen" for six months.
Daily metrics on energy use, traffic congestion, consumer spending and unemployment are showing a dramatic contraction of economic activity in Australia as social distancing restrictions take effect.
Daily consumption of energy tapered off on Thursday, traffic congestion in Sydney and Melbourne this week is down more than 30 per cent on last year's average, and site traffic to Centrelink has surged 500 per cent in five days, with the key search phrase being "Jobseeker payment".
"All this real-time data is becoming much more valuable to policymakers and investors because things are moving so quickly that the usual data from the ABS and – even weekly data – is now looking dated," ANZ head of economics David Plank said.
WattClarity energy analyst Paul McArdle said that just over Thursday, Australia's aggregate energy usage had dipped below 500,000 megawatt hours and "might" be indicative of the movement restrictions starting to work.
Go easy on governments that hesitated to shut down economic life while weighing whether mitigation or suppression was the best weapon against COVID-19.
The coronavirus crisis is terrifying not just for its potentially staggering scale, but also for its resistance to rational analysis. It's forcing governments to make enormously consequential decisions without knowing what the results will be, or how alternative courses of action might have played out.
This state of affairs is so unsettling to the rational mind that one longs for rules of thumb that suspend doubt, set complications and trade-offs aside, and offer some clarity. "Just do everything, and worry later about having overreacted" seems to be trending. It sounds reassuring and purposeful, but only so long as you don't think about it too much.
With millions of lives and colossal economic losses on the line, COVID-19 is still in the realm of radical uncertainty. At the moment, there's too little information even to calculate usable probabilities.
In managing this crisis, Australia is tracking mid-pack
Whether climate change, inequality, education, economic growth or the current coronavirus outbreak, the English-speaking countries are being outperformed.
Andrew Wear
Mar 28, 2020 – 12.00am
Although it seems a long way off, the COVID-19 pandemic will eventually end. As we dissect the experience – perhaps at a future coronavirus royal commission – it's important we learn from our experience and the lessons of other countries.
At this stage, it appears that Iran, the US and several European countries have struggled to contain the spread of the virus. Conversely, the East Asian "Tiger" countries (Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea) seem to have been particularly effective, after learning from the SARS epidemic of 2003. As usual, Australia is mid-pack – not the worst, but not the best either. It remains to be seen whether Australia remains there when this is all over.
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have largely succeeded in slowing the spread of the virus. They instituted a comprehensive testing regime and quickly identified early cases, locking them down, limiting transmission. With impressive speed, they have been able to rapidly deploy innovative technology to identify patients at high risk to ensure they were contained. For example, Taiwan rapidly cross-matched the immigration and customs database with the national health insurance database to enable doctors to be alerted to patients’ recent overseas travel.
The early national unity has fallen apart. The corona consensus has turned into an outbreak of argument. On three levels. The most consequential is the breakdown of broad unity that existed between the states and the federal government until just over a week ago.
Leaders have maintained their civility. And a semblance of co-ordination between the state and federal leaders continues through the so-called national cabinet. This is better than uncivil leaders and no co-ordination.
But by their actions it's plain that the premiers are frustrated with Scott Morrison past any point of patience and have started to exert their own powers. The states are now wielding sovereign controls, independently of the federal government, more decisively than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to Anne Twomey.
"To the best of my knowledge," says the Sydney University constitutional scholar, "the last time would have been NSW in the 1932 financial crisis."
The Morrison government has announced another $1.1 billion in health and social support amid disturbing signs domestic violence is already on the rise as the coronavirus wreaks economic havoc.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Health Minister Greg Hunt will unveil on Sunday a series of initiatives including an initial $150 million help victims of domestic violence.
"Google is seeing the highest magnitude of searches for domestic violence help that they have seen in the past five years with an increase of 75 per cent and some services are already reporting an increase in demand,'' the government said in a statement.
The funding will be used for counselling and education programs, an information campaign to help victims, as well as support programs for women and children experiencing violence to protect themselves to stay in their homes, or a home of their choice, when it is safe to do so.
All Australians will be able to have doctors' appointments at home through Medicare as the government pumps $669 million into telehealth services to avoid queues turning up in person at their GPs.
The measure is part of a $1.1 billion package that will also see $150 million provided to support Australians experiencing domestic, family and sexual violence due to the fallout from coronavirus.
The Prime Minister's Office has been briefed by Google on an alarming spike in domestic violence searches since the crisis began in Australia a month ago.
The internet giant is seeing the highest magnitude of searches for domestic violence help in five years with an increase of 75 per cent. The number of cases are expected to surge as Australians are told to stay at home as much as possible for the next six months and domestic violence services struggle to keep up with demand.
Federal cabinet will move to plug a hole in the welfare system that would have seen up to 400,000 Australians laid off during the coronavirus crisis miss out on Centrelink benefits.
The imminent move, to be delivered without Parliament sitting, will see changes to the "benefit cliff," a hard threshold that would have left families struggling to keep up with the cost of living.
Police are tonight cracking down on Queenslanders ignoring coronavirus isolation laws.
Under the current arrangements, sacked or stood-down workers would not have been eligible for either the coronavirus supplement of $550, the Jobseeker payment of $550, or other Centrelink measures such as rent assistance if their employed partner earned more than $1850 a fortnight. The threshold would have hit the partners of critical front-line workers such as teachers or nurses and forced households to survive on $48,000 a year.
Updated Mar 28, 2020 – 8.16pm, first published at 7.49pm
The federal government is planning to pay a generous share of wages for closed and hobbled businesses that retain their employees during the coronavirus recession.
The payments, being worked on by Treasury, will be similar to wage subsidies of 75 per cent to 80 per cent introduced by Canada, Denmark and the United Kingdom in response to the virus shutting down large parts of the economy.
Sources said Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg were finalising government-funded wage payments, which are set to be capped at middle income earner levels.
The emergency wage payments are expected to be announced in the next few days, possibly as early as Sunday.
The irresistible force of the coronavirus collided with the immovable object of the federation this week, revealing both the limits of prime ministerial authority, and the fragility of our very system of governance.
The tension was laid bare on Tuesday as Scott Morrison made policy on the run to keep hairdressers open while Western Australia became the first of the mainland states to close its borders to the rest of the country. A prime minister mired in the weeds of regulation while premiers and chief ministers exercised the equivalent of wartime powers offers a telling example of the power of COVID-19 to shatter political hierarchies as it shuts down the economy. On that same Tuesday, March 24, the New South Wales government confirmed that one of the first passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise to test positive for the virus, a woman in her 70s, died.
Neither level of government would have anticipated this particular shock when they first met to co-ordinate a national response to the health crisis a fortnight ago. A unity of purpose, with a clear chain of command was taken for granted because leaders assumed the combination of the Commonwealth chequebook, respect for expert advice and a whatever-it-takes spending for state hospitals would help Australia avoid an American, British or Italian-style catastrophe. "All too often we squabble about health, not at this [meeting]," Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews assured the public at a joint press conference with the Prime Minister and fellow premiers and chief ministers on March 13. "We are all united."
UpdatedMarch 22, 2020 — 11.39amfirst published at 11.28am
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has revealed another $66 billion in spending to help the Australian economy through the coronavirus pandemic.
The second package brings the total spend to $189 billion, including $90 billion from the Reserve Bank, worth about 10 per cent of the size of the Australian economy. It includes giving workers early access to $20,000 worth of superannuation funds if they fall into hardship due to the virus.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for Australians to cancel all non-essential travel.
"We will be focusing on those in the front line, those who will be feeling the first blows of the economic impact of the coronavirus," Mr Morrison said on Sunday.
It hardly seems sensible to be putting numbers on how much the Morrison government will spend to support the economy, whether it’s the first effort of $17.6bn, the RBA’s $90bn last Thursday, or Sunday’s latest number of $66.1bn.
Moreover the precision of $66.1bn is meaningless, beyond being a number big enough that everybody might feel better for five minutes and the Prime Minister can have another one of those grave pep-talky press conferences.
And adding them all up to $189bn (rounded up from $188.7bn) is even more meaningless, since RBA quantitative easing, cash off the budget to pensioners and businesses, permission to withdraw from superannuation and the various other parts of the packages are not just apples and oranges, but a whole basket of fruit.
The economy is likely to be entirely shut down within a few days apart from essential services, in which case government support for businesses and jobs will have to be unlimited, as it is in other countries. It’s likely that most, if not all, developed economies will soon be shut down, apart from essential businesses.
Consumer confidence has plummeted to its lowest level since Australia's last recession as shoppers become panicked by the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
The ANZ/Roy Morgan weekly measure of consumer sentiment tumbled 27.8 per cent through the past seven days to sit now just above its all-time low recorded in 1990.
It is 17 per cent below the bottom reached during the global financial crisis in October 2008.
All measures, including current financial conditions and current economic conditions, stumbled. The biggest fall was on the question of whether it is a good time to buy a major household item which dropped by 37.2 per cent.
The budget deficit could blow out to $160 billion next financial year, Westpac believes, as stimulus measures and a collapse in tax revenues due to the coronavirus pandemic wreak havoc on the Morrison government's fiscal strategy.
The bank also predicted the unemployment rate would jump to 11.1 per cent over the next three months, pushing up to 814,000 people onto the jobless queue, and the economy was headed for its biggest short-term contraction on record.
Those who've lost their jobs because of the coronavirus shutdowns aren't eligible for the new Centrelink benefits if they have a partner earning over $48,000 a year but the Social Services Minister says she's working to change that.
Consumer confidence on Tuesday slumped to its lowest level since Australia's last recession in 1990-91 and more firms announced store closures as the economic damage from efforts to control the virus continued to grow.
March has been a record-setting month for both humanity and financial markets that has rendered important insights in relation to risk and liquidity.
To recap, in late February it was clear that the world was about to experience a liquidity shock that would rapidly morph into a solvency crisis because investors were not able to properly price the distribution of risks around what is the first global pathogenic pandemic with dire real economic consequences in over 100 years.
It was also clear that central banks and treasuries needed to immediately act in their lender of last resort capacity to provide unconditional catastrophe insurance to the global economy in the form of guarantees of liquidity (and hence solvency) to governments and the core banking systems that serve as the essential arteries intermediating savings and loans. Failure to do so would precipitate extreme catastrophes the likes of which we had not seen in a century.
Policymakers and politicians did not embrace or receive this message, and ultimately had to be coerced into action by the worst market declines – and the poorest liquidity conditions – observed since the great depression.
Australian researchers have provided the world with what is likely to become a new standard of care for men with prostate cancer.
It is for men who have been diagnosed and are not sure what to do next. Specifically, it is for those with localised prostate cancer with aggressive features.
The researchers, from 10 sites across the country, have demonstrated definitively how a form of molecular scanning can provide far more information than conventional scanning.
This extra information can be very important in deciding on a treatment plan. For many, it can save unnecessary surgery or radiation.
COVID-19: is it time for Australians to make future medical decisions?
National Advance Care Planning Week kicks off today encouraging Australians to plan their future care. But it prompts the questions - what does this mean in a time of COVID-19 and is now the right time?
In early March nearly 200 organisations and community groups across Australia had opted to host an awareness-raising event to encourage people to consider their future medical treatment preferences. However many events have been cancelled in the past week due to concerns around coronavirus.
“When we set the date for this initiative back in November 2019, little did we know that the world would be gripped by a disruptive global pandemic. It’s disappointing but understandable that so many events have been cancelled,” said Dr Karen Detering, Medical Director of Advance Care Planning Australia (ACPA).
A trial of lopinavir–ritonavir in adults hospitalized with severe COVID-19: A total of 199 patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection underwent randomisation; 99 were assigned to the lopinavir–ritonavir group, and 100 to the standard-care group. Treatment with lopinavir–ritonavir was not associated with a difference from standard care in the time to clinical improvement (hazard ratio [HR] for clinical improvement, 1.24; 95% CI, 0.90–1.72). Mortality at 28 days was similar in the lopinavir–ritonavir group and the standard care group (19.2% v 25.0%; difference, −5.8 percentage points; 95% CI, −17.3 to 5.7). The percentages of patients with detectable viral RNA at various time points were similar. In a modified intention-to-treat analysis, lopinavir–ritonavir led to a median time to clinical improvement that was shorter by one day than that observed with standard care (HR, 1.39; 95% CI, 1.00–1.91). Gastrointestinal adverse events were more common in the lopinavir–ritonavir group, but serious adverse events were more common in the standard care group. Lopinavir–ritonavir treatment was stopped early in 13 patients (13.8%) because of adverse events. Conclusion: in hospitalised adult patients with severe COVID-19, no benefit was observed with lopinavir–ritonavir treatment beyond standard care. Future trials in patients with severe illness may help to confirm or exclude the possibility of a treatment benefit. OPEN ACCESS at https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001282
London | British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has bowed to the inevitable and sent his country into COVID-19 lockdown, restricting outdoor movement to essential shopping, medical needs, solitary exercise and unavoidable travel to work.
Police will have the powers to break up gatherings of more than two people (excepting families), and penalise transgressors. All shops and institutions apart from essentials such as food and chemists will close. The measures will last at least three weeks.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a highly unusual televised "statement to the country" Downing Street.
"If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home," Mr Johnson told his nation in a sombre televised address on Monday night (Tuesday morning AEDT)
"No prime minister wants to enact measures like this. I know the damage that this disruption is doing and will do to people's lives, to their businesses and to their jobs.
Updated Mar 24, 2020 – 3.20pm, first published at 12.49pm
Washington | Donald Trump indicated he's chomping at the bit to reopen the US economy as early as possible to avoid creating a downturn worse than the damage inflicted by COVID-19.
Declaring that it was possible to do "two things at once", Mr Trump said the virus was "gonna be bad" but that "we can't have the cure be worse than the problem".
In a near two-hour White House press briefing on Monday (Tuesday AEDT), the US President addressed and stoked a growing debate about whether the instantaneous recession now slamming the US and global economies was justified given the common flu results in 50,000 deaths a year.
While critics of Mr Trump have been quick to condemn his stance as heartless, it was supported by Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat governor of New York state who is overseeing the nation's worst-hit region.
Washington | Having put the US economy into an induced coma to save lives, President Donald Trump says he wants it reopened by Easter lest the business and consumer slump result in even more deaths.
In an extraordinary move that put a hard date on when the President expects America to get back to work, Mr Trump indicated he will soon begin ordering a wind down of social distancing guidelines.
"I would love to have it open by Easter," Mr Trump told Fox News in an extended "town hall" meeting filmed in the Rose Garden on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT). "I would love to have it opened up and just raring to go by Easter."
"Wouldn't it be great to have all the churches full?," Mr Trump said in a second interview with Fox that aired after the Rose Garden event. He suggested the April 12 deadline because "Easter's a very special day for me".
Washington: US President Donald Trump has set a goal for his country to be operating normally again by Easter, saying he believes more people will die from suicides caused by a faltering economy than the coronavirus.
Projecting an optimism at odds with most public health experts and the leader of virtually every other country in the world, Trump said he would love to have the US "opened up and just raring to go" by Easter on April 12.
“I’d love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall on Tuesday. "It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too."
His comments came as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in the US accelerate rapidly and the World Health Organisation warns that the country could become the next centre of the pandemic.
Coronavirus: People leaving New York should self-quarantine amid COVID-19 spike
·By Agencies
·AP
·9:53AM March 25, 2020
The White House has advised that due to spike in infections, people who have recently left New York City should self-quarantine for 14 days.
The city’s governor Andrew Cuomo warned New York could become the next centre of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of cases in the city is doubling every three days.
New York State has recorded more than 200 deaths, or one-third of the US total.
An angry Governor Cuomo slammed the US Federal Emergency Management Agency for not sending enough ventilators, saying New York was in desperately short supply.
A series of missteps and lost opportunities has dogged America's response to COVID-19.
Donald G. McNeil Jr.
Mar 27, 2020 – 9.51am
New York | Scientists warned that the United States would someday become the country hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. That moment arrived Thursday (Friday AEDT).
At least 81,321 people in the US are known to have been infected with the coronavirus, including more than 1000 deaths – more cases than China, Italy or any other country has seen, according to data gathered by The New York Times.
With 330 million residents, the US is the world's third-most populous nation, meaning it provides a vast pool of people who can potentially get COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.
Washington DC | Nearly 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week - more than quadruple the previous record set in 1982 - amid a widespread economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus.
The surge in weekly applications was a stunning reflection of the damage the viral outbreak is doing to the economy. Filings for unemployment aid generally reflect the pace of layoffs.
The pace of layoffs is sure to accelerate as the US economy sinks into a recession. Revenue has collapsed at restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, gyms, and airlines. Auto sales are plummeting, and car makers have close factories. Most such employers face loan payments and other fixed costs, so they're cutting jobs to save money.
As job losses mount, some economists say the nation's unemployment rate could approach 13 per cent by May. By comparison, the highest jobless rate during the Great Recession, which ended in 2009, was 10 per cent.
London: Spain risks becoming the new epicentre of the global coronavirus crisis, with the country's death toll soaring to overtake China in a rapidly worsening outbreak that even threatens to eclipse the tragedy in Italy.
On Wednesday 738 deaths brought total fatalities in Spain to nearly 3500 - about 300 more than the official tally in China, where the deadly pandemic began late last year. There are so many victims in the capital Madrid that an ice skating rink has been transformed into a temporary morgue.
Of the 20,499 coronavirus-related deaths worldwide, more than half are now in Spain and Italy.
"People are bored and they are frustrated because they don't know what is going to happen in the weeks ahead," said Helen Stasa, an Australian living in Spain.
"But I would say they are also scared. I live with my husband and father-in-law and my father-in-law has been watching a lot of TV and he is petrified. It's horrible."
Washington | President Donald Trump on Friday (Saturday AEDT) signed a massive $US2 trillion ($3.2 trillion) emergency spending bill into law, which policy makers hope will blunt some of the coronavirus epidemic's economic fallout.
His signature came just hours after the House of Representatives passed the measure by a voice vote, and less than 48 hours after it received unanimous approval from the Senate.
"I want to thank Democrats and Republicans for coming together and putting America first," Trump said.
Now, the White House, Treasury Department, Small Business Administration and other agencies must rush to try and flood the economy with money under the new law.
Trump considering quarantine for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut
March 29, 2020 — 8.12am
President Donald Trump said he was considering a quarantine as early as Saturday for coronavirus hotspots in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, though it wasn't clear whether he had the power to order state residents to stay put.
Trump told reporters that he had spoken with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, among others, and that "a lot of the states that are infected but don't have a big problem, they've asked me if I'll look at it so we're going to look at it."
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who criticised the federal government's response as his state became the country's virus epicentre, said the issue had not come up in a conversation he had with Trump earlier Saturday.
"I don't even know what that means," the Democrat said at a briefing in New York. "I don't know how that could be legally enforceable, and from a medical point of view, I don't know what you would be accomplishing. ... I don't like the sound of it."
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has cast doubt on Sao Paulo's death toll from the coronavirus outbreak and accused the state governor of manipulating the numbers for political ends.
Bolsonaro's accusations were the latest broadside in an ugly battle with Brazil's governors, who have differed from the president's view that protecting the economy takes priority over social distancing measures to combat the spread of the highly contagious virus.
Following the advice of public health experts, the vast majority of the country's 26 governors banned non-essential commercial activities and public services to contain the outbreak in their states.
"I'm sorry, some people will die, they will die, that's life," Bolsonaro said in a television interview on Friday night. "You can't stop a car factory because of traffic deaths."
Saudis look for way out of Yemen after five years of failure
By Richard Spencer
The Times
12:56AM March 29, 2020
Saudi Arabia is suing for peace in Yemen after a humiliating defeat for its allied forces in the north of the country, five years after intervening in the civil war.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the UN-recognised government said last week that it would accept a ceasefire call made by the United Nations in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, its statement followed the capture by Houthi rebels of an entire province in the north of the country. The rebels are within 30km of the city of Marib, the centre of the Saudi zone of influence.
The Houthis swept through al-Jawf in a matter of weeks, overwhelming troops from the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.
