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Is This A Bear Market Rally Or A New Bull? BofA Has The Answer… And What Happens Next

Is This A Bear Market Rally Or A New Bull? BofA Has The Answer… And What Happens Next

With the S&P trading nearly 800 points – or a whopping 30% – above its March 23 lows, the divergence in opinions whether this is a new bull market or merely a massive – and the fastest ever – bear market rally ever, propped up by trillions in central bank liquidity and fiscal stimulus, has never been greater.

We won’t go into details covering the key arguments of either camp (we have done that on numerous occasions in the past, and urge readers to read the latest reports by the chief equity strategists of Goldman, David Kostin, and Morgan Stanley, Michael Wilson  to compare just how stark the variance in outlooks is among the two most widely followed Wall Street strategists) and instead we will go straight to what may be a remarkably accurate answer to this dilemma that is keeping Wall Street up at night.

In determining whether March marked the beginning of a real bull market (like March of 2009, March of 2003 and Jan of 1991) or a bear market rally (Nov 1989, June 2000 and Dec 2008), BofA’s quant team conveniently notes that factors can help. Consider that during the early stages of each of the prior real bull markets, the bank’s Low Price factor –  read “dollar stocks”, or “distressed equities” – was the best performing factor, but did not lead in bear market rallies.

Alternatively, prior bear market rallies saw mixed leadership, and “Low Price” traditionally was outperformed by such factors as Value, Momentum and Growth.

How about the current rally?

Since 23 March lows, Value (Price/Book and Fwd P/E) and Risk (Estimate Dispersion and Beta) have led. But it is the mediocre performance of Low Price stocks, i.e. distressed equities from the bottom, which to BofA suggests that this is, indeed, just another bear market rally.

BofA’s conclusion is validated by a recent report from SocGen’s own quants, led by Andrew Lapthorne, who notes that “after a record low in March, the market has surged in a short order, registering a stunning 31% gain in a matter of a month. Given the overall negative undertone from the economic challenges ahead, the dramatic reversal of global markets after the pandemic lows is more puzzling, as it also implies an all clear victory against the silent enemy and a return back to the pre-pandemic normality.”

And while moves of such magnitude have been observed in the past, furious overshoots such as the current one tend to be – almost entirely – bear market rallies, because as Lapthonre notes, a look through the annals of market history and a study of bear markets in the last 150 years…

… reveals that “a return to recovery from a bear market bottom, both cyclical downturns and sudden market crashes, has often been gradual, with frequent adjustments along the way, reflecting the weight of uncertainty surrounding economic recovery out of the ashes of crises.“

In that respect, the ongoing surge in global markets strikes as an oddity (chart below) even after factoring in the massive bridges of support from monetary and fiscal stimulus.

As Lapthorne concludes, “based on an exhaustive analysis of bear markets of the last century and half, under the most conservative scenario – that the market has indeed reached cyclical bottom in the March sell-off – the S&P 500 would finish at about 2715 by year-end, a 7-8% cumulative correction from the current level of 2,939.”


Tyler Durden

Tue, 05/12/2020 – 13:37

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Lnl1CW Tyler Durden

Futures, Yields, Yuan Tumble As GOP Senate Intros China Sanctions Bill

Futures, Yields, Yuan Tumble As GOP Senate Intros China Sanctions Bill

Following an extremely strong 10Y bond auction, and news that Senator Graham and GOP Senators have introduced a bill sanctioning China, US futures and Treasury yields are tumbling.

Yields extending their decline…

Yuan is selling off…

And Stocks are down hard…

The bill is related to China’s treatment of Uighurs but comes on the heels of last night’s details on the Trump admin pulling pension fund investment plans in China (and after China’s apparent retaliatory ban on Aussie beef).


Tyler Durden

Tue, 05/12/2020 – 13:26

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YS9Rhw Tyler Durden

“Spectacular Demand”: Record Big 10Y Auction Prices At Record Low Yield

“Spectacular Demand”: Record Big 10Y Auction Prices At Record Low Yield

Heading into today’s supersized 10Y auction, BMO’s rates strategist lamented the stubborn range which has confined US rates since mid-March – at +/-10bps of 61bps – which however indicates that even the hefty dose of larger than anticipated long-end auctions is insufficient to redefine the trading parameters. This, they said, bodes well for today’s supply and the combination of attractive hedged returns for Japanese investors in US Treasuries, together with the record poor April consumer price update should support the underwriting process.

BMO was right, because one day after a stellar supersized 3Y auction, refunding week continued with today’s sale of a record large 10Y Treasury, which at $32 billion was the largest offering on record.

Appropriately, the yield on this record big auction was the lowest on record, and at 0.70%, it stopped through 1.2bps the 0.712% When Issued, and well below April’s prior record low yield of 0.775%.

The other metrics were remarkable as well, with the Bid to Cover jumping to 2.68, the highest since June 2016, while the internals were tremendous, with the Indirects taking down 66.1%, the highest since April 2019, and with Directs taking 13.3%, in line with last month, Dealers were left with 20.5%.

Overall, this was a spectacular auction which saw demand off the charts, and the result has been a kneejerk drop in yields across the board to session lows.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 05/12/2020 – 13:13

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zzQG17 Tyler Durden

SocGen Reportedly Ends Commodity-Financing Biz After $240 Million Loss In Asian Oil-Trading Giant Bankruptcy

SocGen Reportedly Ends Commodity-Financing Biz After $240 Million Loss In Asian Oil-Trading Giant Bankruptcy

After pointing out the perplexing lack of high-profile blow-ups in the current commodity crush (as a reminder back in 2016 when oil dropped less than it has now, the Glencores and Trafiguras of the world were this close to collapse), we reported less than a month ago that one of Singapore’s biggest and most iconic – and extremely secretive – oil traders, Hin Leong Trading, whose website reports revenue surpassed $14 billion all the way back in 2012, filed for bankruptcy protection after, according to a Bloomberg report, the son of the “legendary” founder of Hin Leong said the Singapore oil trader hid about $800 million in losses racked up in futures trading.

At the time we warned that potentially means huge losses for the banks which provided the merchant with billions in loans as the collateral they thought they have as a guarantee isn’t there. Altogether, Hin Leong is said to owe almost $4 billion to more than 20 banks including HSBC (which said it booked a substantial loan loss provisions from an exposure to oil traders), who will now scramble to figure out just how massive their loan losses are.

And now, as Bloomberg reports, we see the first real victim as Societe Generale is halting fresh funding to oil trading firms in the Asia Pacific region and reviewing its activities globally after taking a large hit because of the collapse of the Singapore giant.

According to people with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg notes that the Singaporean company filed for creditor protection while owing the French bank about $240 million leading it to reconsider its future business in commodities financing both in the APAC region and more broadly.

“Societe Generale doesn’t comment on market rumors but the bank reminds that Natural Resources financing is one of its core expertise,” the lender said in a statement.

“Societe Generale will remain committed to the Trade Commodity Finance sector, including in Asia.”

As we detailed previously, one unexpected consequence of the company’s sudden bankruptcy, is that with a record 160MM barrels of oil loaded up on tankers to ease the global commodity glut, Singapore may suddenly lose its place as the world’s tanker “parking lot.” While traditionally Singapore has had massive spare oil storage capacity which explains photos such as shits one…

… it is Hin Leong’s Universal Terminal that has storage capacity of 2.33 million cubic meters and is the largest independent petroleum storage terminal in Singapore and one of the biggest independent storage facilities worldwide. But now that the company is bankrupt, the ability of tankers to store their holdings in the terminal is suddenly in limbo, which means that storing oil on sea may suddenly become far more complicated.

Hin Leong’s Universal Terminal with storage capacity of 2.33 million cubic meters is the largest independent petroleum storage terminal in Singapore and one of the biggest independent storage facilities worldwide. Source: Hin Leong

Last month, before we know the extent of the company’s financial debacle – and fraud – we concludes that “it is unclear what will happen to the Singapore commodity trading giant if it is unable to find banks that will backstop its operations.” Well, we now know – game over – which makes the second part of our forecast especially applicable: “should the firm become insolvent, the downstream cascade for companies in the Pacific Rim could be devastating.”

And it seems we are correct as we are sure SocGen will not be the last to reconsider its credit-financing of these over-levered Asian trading entities.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 05/12/2020 – 13:06

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‘You’re Not The End All’: Rand Paul Slams Fauci In Heated Exchange Over Lockdowns

‘You’re Not The End All’: Rand Paul Slams Fauci In Heated Exchange Over Lockdowns

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) gave quite the earful to a home-bound Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday over the COVID-19 lockdown that has crippled the US economy.

Paul, a medical doctor, noted that the mortality rate among children ‘approaches zero’, and that for those aged 18-45 “the mortality in New York was 10 out of 100,000.”

“The history of this when we look back will be wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction… As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I don’t think you’re the end all, I don’t think you’re the one person that gets to make a decision,” said Paul – who added that we need to “observe with an open eye what happened in Sweden, where the kids kept going to school.”

“The mortality per capita in Sweden is actually less than France, less than Italy, less than Spain, less than Belgium, less than the Netherlands, about the same as Switzerland. But basically I don’t think there’s anybody arguing that what happened in Sweden is an unacceptable result. I think people are intrigued by it, and we should be.”

“I don’t think any of us are certain when we do all these modelings – there have been more people wrong with modeling than right. We’re opening up a lot of economies around the US, and I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and saying ‘oh, we can’t do this, there’s going to be a surge’ – will admit when there isn’t a surge.”

Watch:

Fauci responded, (25 seconds in below), saying “Sen. Paul, I have never made myself out to be the end-all & only voice of this. I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official.”

He then offered a ‘but, the children!’ argument – latching onto Paul’s comment that we don’t know everything about the virus, and that “we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children.“

“Because the more and more we learn – we’re seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China. Or in Europe. For example, right now children presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory symdrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome. I think we better be careful that we are not cavalier in thinking that children are not immune to the deleterious effects.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 05/12/2020 – 13:00

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Here Are All The Chinese “Propaganda” Centers Currently Operating In The US

Here Are All The Chinese “Propaganda” Centers Currently Operating In The US

Authored by Jon Street via Campus Reform,

Dozens of Chinese “propaganda” centers still operate across the United States, even as U.S. lawmakers debate how to hold the communist country accountable for withholding information about the coronavirus, which originated in China’s Wuhan province.

For years, Campus Reform has reported on the number of Confucius Institutes on U.S. college campuses. Funded by the communist regime, these centers are marketed as Chinese language and culture centers. However, U.S. intelligence officials have warned that these centers are little more than “propaganda” arms of the communist country.

Even the former Chinese propaganda minister,  Liu Yushan, wrote in a 2010 article for Chinese-state media:

“With regard to key issues that influence our sovereignty and safety, we should actively carry out international propaganda battles against issuers such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, human rights and Falun Gong…

We should do well in establishing and operating overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes,” Politico reported in 2018.

While China and the U.S. disagree on most things, this appears to be one area in which officials from both countries share opinions.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a 2018 congressional hearing when asked about Confucius Institutes on college campuses, “The level of naïveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues. They’re exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere. But they’re taking advantage of it.”

CIA reports obtained by The Washington Free Beacon further revealed, “The [Chinese Communist Party] provides ‘strings-attached’ funding to academic institutions and think tanks to deter research that casts it in a negative light. It has used this tactic to reward pro-China viewpoints and coerce Western academic publications and conferences to self-censor. The CCP often denies visas to academics who criticize the regime, encouraging many China scholars to preemptively self-censor so they can maintain access to the country on which their research depends.”

While legislation signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018 resulted in about a dozen U.S. colleges shuttering Confucius Institutes on campus, those closures were largely the result of their loss of funding, rather than concerns for the country’s national security. 

And now, nearly two years after that legislation became law, more than 75 Confucius Institutes are still in operation in the U.S., most of them on college campuses. From Maine to Florida to Kansas to California, these centers claim to educate American students about Chinese language and culture, and administrators who run the campuses on which they operate appear to believe the same country that claims to have fewer coronavirus deaths than the U.S, despite its population being more than three times the size of the U.S. population. 

Based on data from the National Association of Scholars, along with records maintained by Campus Reform, the interactive map above shows the locations where Confucius Institutes still operate. Hover your cursor over each dot to reveal the name of each college or school that currently hosts one of these centers. 


Tyler Durden

Tue, 05/12/2020 – 12:46

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No, 68 Percent of Americans Did Not Say They Would Avoid ‘Normal Life’ Until There’s a Coronavirus Vaccine

Two-thirds of Americans said they would not return to “normal life” until a vaccine becomes available for COVID-19, according to CNN.

The ramifications of this finding would be well worth discussing, since the timeline for a vaccine is unknowable: It could be available next year, in three years, or never. But it turns out that the headline, “68% of Americans say a vaccine is needed before returning to normal life, new survey finds,” is fake news.

The CNN article cites a Gallup poll as its source. But Gallup did not poll respondents on the question of whether a vaccine was “needed before returning to normal life,” which was CNN’s wording of the question in the headline.

The actual question was “How important are each of the following factors to you when thinking about your willingness to return to your normal activities?” The option “availability of a vaccine to prevent COVID-19” was important to 68 percent of respondents. That’s quite different: A vaccine could be “very important” to people without being absolutely mandatory.

The difference is a little clearer later in the article, where CNN uses the exact language from Gallup—but buried under a lot of other information.

This misinterpretation of the poll was first noticed by Arc Digital‘s Nicholas Grossman, who called it “an egregious misreading.”

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Quarantine Fatigue and the Social End to the Coronavirus Pandemic

“If 18 months of extreme social distancing is what it takes to stop coronavirus, we’re doomed,” declared my Reason colleague Robby Soave way back on March 18. The 18-month timeline was based on speculations about how long it would take to develop and deploy an effective vaccine. On March 18, only some 7,000 cases and 141 deaths in the U.S. had been attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As of today, the toll stands at about 1.4 million cases and over 82,000 deaths.

The Trump administration had released its social distancing guidelines two days earlier on March 16 partially in response to dire worst-case projections that as many as 2.2 million Americans could die of the disease made by Neil Ferguson’s modeling group at the Imperial College in London. In mid-March I asked, “Are we battling an unprecedented pandemic or panicking at a computer-generated mirage?” It turns out that significant flaws were identified by other researchers once Ferguson’s group finally got around to releasing their model’s computer code.

Over at The New York Times, science reporter Gina Kolata asks, “When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? And how?” She observes that epidemics medically end when disease incidence and death rates plummet as herd immunity is achieved through either mass infection or mass vaccination. On the other hand, epidemics socially end when people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease.

“People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found,” suggests Kolata.

And smolder it might. The lockdowns aimed to flatten the curve of the epidemic—that is, slow down the rate of infection. And it worked. Nationally, the daily number of new confirmed cases peaked at over 36,000 on April 24 and has dropped to under 20,000 as of yesterday. The goal is to spread out the infections over time in order to avoid overtaxing the health care system with a flood of cases; however, the number of people who become eventually infected will not necessarily be lower.

As their fears about exponential increases in infections and deaths abate, more and more Americans are easing themselves out of lockdown. For example, a Monmouth University poll reported earlier this week that 30 percent of respondents are not too concerned or not at all concerned that someone in their family might become seriously ill from the coronavirus outbreak, up from 16 percent a month ago.

“Lockdown is ending, whether governments approve or not,” declared my Reason colleague Eric Boehm. Rising quarantine fatigue and the greater acceptance of disease risk by the public is behind the moves by a majority of U.S. states to at least partially reopen their economies by loosening social distancing guidelines. Anonymized cell phone data already reveals that many residents in 20 states have increased their mobility by 15 to 20 percent in the last few weeks.

So what might learning to live with COVID-19 look like? Keeping firmly in mind that all models are imperfect, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s (IHME) model recently raised its projection of U.S. COVID-19 deaths to 137,000 by the beginning of August. In comparison, the model developed by Youyang Gu and his colleagues projects a central estimate of 188,000 deaths by then.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2017 that deaths from all causes in the U.S. averaged around 7,700 per day. The summer trajectories of the two models suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. would add something like 666 and 1,273 deaths respectively to the daily toll. If the Gu model turns out to be more prescient, the daily death rate of 8,973 that it projects would be a bit above the average of 8,478 deaths per day in January 2017. This level of increased mortality is unlikely to overwhelm our health care system.

Another factor to keep in mind is who is at greatest risk of dying of the disease. About 75 percent of deaths from all causes—that is, about 5,750 per day—already occur in Americans over the age of 65. Since around 80 percent of Americans who die of COVID-19 are over the age of 65, that would boost the over-65 average by between 500 to 1,000 deaths per day respectively in these models’ projections. If these estimates are anywhere near ballpark accurate, the steady tragic toll of COVID-19 deaths will no longer inspire panic and most Americans will resignedly learn to live with the disease.

As Americans exit lockdown and quarantine in their hopeful search for normalcy, some public health officials fear that the rates of coronavirus infection and death could begin to rise again. According to The New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Trump administration pandemic adviser, is expected later today at a Senate hearing to warn against “the danger of trying to open the country prematurely.” In his response to the Times, Fauci adds, “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”

How far back? Perhaps Sweden’s relatively lax public health response to the pandemic may provide some hints as to how loosening restrictions might play out here. It is worth noting that Sweden’s coronavirus death rate currently stands at 328 per million residents compared to 248 per million in the U.S. Sweden’s death rate scaled up to match the U.S. population would suggest that 108,000 Americans would be dead by now instead of 82,000. On the other hand, if the IHME and Gu models are correct, that number of Americans will likely die of coronavirus infections before the end of this month. In any case, it is not at all clear that Sweden’s economy will fare substantially better than those of other countries that implemented more comprehensive lockdowns.

All the signs indicate that the social end of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is nigh.

A couple of caveats beyond due skepticism with respect to models should be noted. First, these projections presume that at least some moderate social distancing practices will be maintained through the summer. If not, the number of cases and deaths will concomitantly rise beyond these projections. Second, the projections also assume that test, track, and voluntary self-isolation programs that aim to contain the epidemic will remain somewhat hit-or-miss. And thirdly, they presuppose that no widely effective treatments will emerge in the next few months.

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via IFTTT

No, 68 Percent of Americans Did Not Say They Would Avoid ‘Normal Life’ Until There’s a Coronavirus Vaccine

Two-thirds of Americans said they would not return to “normal life” until a vaccine becomes available for COVID-19, according to CNN.

The ramifications of this finding would be well worth discussing, since the timeline for a vaccine is unknowable: It could be available next year, in three years, or never. But it turns out that the headline, “68% of Americans say a vaccine is needed before returning to normal life, new survey finds,” is fake news.

The CNN article cites a Gallup poll as its source. But Gallup did not poll respondents on the question of whether a vaccine was “needed before returning to normal life,” which was CNN’s wording of the question in the headline.

The actual question was “How important are each of the following factors to you when thinking about your willingness to return to your normal activities?” The option “availability of a vaccine to prevent COVID-19” was important to 68 percent of respondents. That’s quite different: A vaccine could be “very important” to people without being absolutely mandatory.

The difference is a little clearer later in the article, where CNN uses the exact language from Gallup—but buried under a lot of other information.

This misinterpretation of the poll was first noticed by Arc Digital‘s Nicholas Grossman, who called it “an egregious misreading.”

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3fRYgFk
via IFTTT

Quarantine Fatigue and the Social End to the Coronavirus Pandemic

“If 18 months of extreme social distancing is what it takes to stop coronavirus, we’re doomed,” declared my Reason colleague Robby Soave way back on March 18. The 18-month timeline was based on speculations about how long it would take to develop and deploy an effective vaccine. On March 18, only some 7,000 cases and 141 deaths in the U.S. had been attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. As of today, the toll stands at about 1.4 million cases and over 82,000 deaths.

The Trump administration had released its social distancing guidelines two days earlier on March 16 partially in response to dire worst-case projections that as many as 2.2 million Americans could die of the disease made by Neil Ferguson’s modeling group at the Imperial College in London. In mid-March I asked, “Are we battling an unprecedented pandemic or panicking at a computer-generated mirage?” It turns out that significant flaws were identified by other researchers once Ferguson’s group finally got around to releasing their model’s computer code.

Over at The New York Times, science reporter Gina Kolata asks, “When will the Covid-19 pandemic end? And how?” She observes that epidemics medically end when disease incidence and death rates plummet as herd immunity is achieved through either mass infection or mass vaccination. On the other hand, epidemics socially end when people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease.

“People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found,” suggests Kolata.

And smolder it might. The lockdowns aimed to flatten the curve of the epidemic—that is, slow down the rate of infection. And it worked. Nationally, the daily number of new confirmed cases peaked at over 36,000 on April 24 and has dropped to under 20,000 as of yesterday. The goal is to spread out the infections over time in order to avoid overtaxing the health care system with a flood of cases; however, the number of people who become eventually infected will not necessarily be lower.

As their fears about exponential increases in infections and deaths abate, more and more Americans are easing themselves out of lockdown. For example, a Monmouth University poll reported earlier this week that 30 percent of respondents are not too concerned or not at all concerned that someone in their family might become seriously ill from the coronavirus outbreak, up from 16 percent a month ago.

“Lockdown is ending, whether governments approve or not,” declared my Reason colleague Eric Boehm. Rising quarantine fatigue and the greater acceptance of disease risk by the public is behind the moves by a majority of U.S. states to at least partially reopen their economies by loosening social distancing guidelines. Anonymized cell phone data already reveals that many residents in 20 states have increased their mobility by 15 to 20 percent in the last few weeks.

So what might learning to live with COVID-19 look like? Keeping firmly in mind that all models are imperfect, the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s (IHME) model recently raised its projection of U.S. COVID-19 deaths to 137,000 by the beginning of August. In comparison, the model developed by Youyang Gu and his colleagues projects a central estimate of 188,000 deaths by then.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in 2017 that deaths from all causes in the U.S. averaged around 7,700 per day. The summer trajectories of the two models suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. would add something like 666 and 1,273 deaths respectively to the daily toll. If the Gu model turns out to be more prescient, the daily death rate of 8,973 that it projects would be a bit above the average of 8,478 deaths per day in January 2017. This level of increased mortality is unlikely to overwhelm our health care system.

Another factor to keep in mind is who is at greatest risk of dying of the disease. About 75 percent of deaths from all causes—that is, about 5,750 per day—already occur in Americans over the age of 65. Since around 80 percent of Americans who die of COVID-19 are over the age of 65, that would boost the over-65 average by between 500 to 1,000 deaths per day respectively in these models’ projections. If these estimates are anywhere near ballpark accurate, the steady tragic toll of COVID-19 deaths will no longer inspire panic and most Americans will resignedly learn to live with the disease.

As Americans exit lockdown and quarantine in their hopeful search for normalcy, some public health officials fear that the rates of coronavirus infection and death could begin to rise again. According to The New York Times, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Trump administration pandemic adviser, is expected later today at a Senate hearing to warn against “the danger of trying to open the country prematurely.” In his response to the Times, Fauci adds, “If we skip over the checkpoints in the guidelines to ‘Open America Again,’ then we risk the danger of multiple outbreaks throughout the country. This will not only result in needless suffering and death, but would actually set us back on our quest to return to normal.”

How far back? Perhaps Sweden’s relatively lax public health response to the pandemic may provide some hints as to how loosening restrictions might play out here. It is worth noting that Sweden’s coronavirus death rate currently stands at 328 per million residents compared to 248 per million in the U.S. Sweden’s death rate scaled up to match the U.S. population would suggest that 108,000 Americans would be dead by now instead of 82,000. On the other hand, if the IHME and Gu models are correct, that number of Americans will likely die of coronavirus infections before the end of this month. In any case, it is not at all clear that Sweden’s economy will fare substantially better than those of other countries that implemented more comprehensive lockdowns.

All the signs indicate that the social end of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. is nigh.

A couple of caveats beyond due skepticism with respect to models should be noted. First, these projections presume that at least some moderate social distancing practices will be maintained through the summer. If not, the number of cases and deaths will concomitantly rise beyond these projections. Second, the projections also assume that test, track, and voluntary self-isolation programs that aim to contain the epidemic will remain somewhat hit-or-miss. And thirdly, they presuppose that no widely effective treatments will emerge in the next few months.

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