Author: admin

Since reports that a cruise ship preparing to dock in San Francisco had been linked to a sick passenger in Cali (that passenger has now died), we’ve been closely following the trials and travails of the ‘Grand Princess’, the latest coronavirus ‘Nightmare at Sea’.

The ship was supposed to dock on Thursday, but it has been drifting listlessly at sea for the past two days after being barred from entry by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In California, negotiations between the state and federal officials about where the ship should dock has become a political hot potato, as state officials battle it out with federal officials. State officials have been trying to find a ‘non-commercial’ (i.e. military) port nearby where the ship can dock and where its more than 3,500 passengers and crew can be tested, USA Today reports.

San Francisco with at least 21 infected passengers and crew (mostly crew) on board. A state source close to the ongoing negotiations told the LA Times that talks would resume on Friday. The Princess Cruises ship remained at sea last night, but the captain notified passengers that it would move 20 nautical miles off the coast for easier delivery of supplies and other ‘logistical reasons’.

Officials have scrambled to provide updates as quickly as possible, but passengers aboard the ship have taken to the Internet to share their experiences independently. Two women have been posting videos offering their takes on the news. They offered some interesting details about how officials put the pieces together to figure out that the cruise ship might be infected. Notice how the women are clearly ill, but claim to have been tested and come back negative for the virus.

These two Youtubers shared a copy of the letter they received from the Captain, which was also shared by a Redditor posting in the r/Coronavirus subreddit.

Here’s the letter:

Just like with the Diamond Princess, which reportedly led the staff to work in unbelievably brutal conditions, the staff aboard the Grand Princes, (so far, mostly staff have been infected) are being put in similarly undesirable conditions.

Waiting for dinner on #GrandPrincess . I feel sorry for the staff on the ship feeding all of us passengers via room service. @PrincessCruises they can’t be paid enough.

— Mark Pace (@markdpace) March 6, 2020

One individual claiming to be a passenger invited questions with a Reddit AMA entitled: “I am a passenger on the Grand Princess cruise ship quarantined off the California coast. Ask me (almost) anything”.

The traveler said the passengers are given an update every few hours by Captain John Smith (yes, we get the Titanic references) but it’s “almost always a rehash of what he said earlier.”

According to the subreddit, there’s still no word on when passengers will disembark.

A sobering analysis of how coronavirus is likely to impact the US healthcare system suggests that hospitals will be quickly overwhelmed with patients, and that all available beds will be filled by around May 8th if the virus tracks with Italy’s figures and 10% of patients require an ICU.

Of note, the Straits Times reported last week that thousands of people were waiting for hospital beds in South Korea as the disease surges.

Liz Specht, a PhD in biology and the associate director of Science and Technology for the Good Food Institute laid out her concerns in a lengthy Twitter thread on Friday, which you can see here on Twitter, or continue reading below.

Let’s conservatively assume that there are 2,000 current cases in the US today, March 6th. This is about 8x the number of confirmed (lab-diagnosed) cases. We know there is substantial under-Dx due to lack of test kits; I’ll address implications later of under-/over-estimate. 2/n

— Liz Specht (@LizSpecht) March 7, 2020

Continued: 

• We can expect that we’ll continue to see a doubling of cases every 6 days (this is a typical doubling time across several epidemiological studies). Here I mean *actual* cases. Confirmed cases may appear to rise faster in the short term due to new test kit rollouts.
• We’re looking at about 1M US cases by the end of April, 2M by ~May 5, 4M by ~May 11, and so on. Exponentials are hard to grasp, but this is how they go.
• As the healthcare system begins to saturate under this case load, it will become increasingly hard to detect, track, and contain new transmission chains. In absence of extreme interventions, this likely won’t slow significantly until hitting >>1% of susceptible population.
• What does a case load of this size mean for healthcare system? We’ll examine just two factors — hospital beds and masks — among many, many other things that will be impacted.
• The US has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1000 people. With a population of 330M, this is ~1M beds. At any given time, 65% of those beds are already occupied. That leaves about 330k beds available nationwide (perhaps a bit fewer this time of year with regular flu season, etc).
• Let’s trust Italy’s numbers and assume that about 10% of cases are serious enough to require hospitalization. (Keep in mind that for many patients, hospitalization lasts for *weeks* — in other words, turnover will be *very* slow as beds fill with COVID19 patients).
• By this estimate, by about May 8th, all open hospital beds in the US will be filled. (This says nothing, of course, about whether these beds are suitable for isolation of patients with a highly infectious virus.)
• If we’re wrong by a factor of two regarding the fraction of severe cases, that only changes the timeline of bed saturation by 6 days in either direction. If 20% of cases require hospitalization, we run out of beds by ~May 2nd.
• If only 5% of cases require it, we can make it until ~May 14th. 2.5% gets us to May 20th. This, of course, assumes that there is no uptick in demand for beds from *other* (non-COVID19) causes, which seems like a dubious assumption.
• As healthcare system becomes increasingly burdened, Rx shortages, etc, people w/ chronic conditions that are normally well-managed may find themselves slipping into severe states of medical distress requiring intensive care & hospitalization. But let’s ignore that for now.
• Alright, so that’s beds. Now masks. Feds say we have a national stockpile of 12M N95 masks and 30M surgical masks (which are not ideal, but better than nothing).
• There are about 18M healthcare workers in the US. Let’s assume only 6M HCW are working on any given day. (This is likely an underestimate as most people work most days of the week, but again, I’m playing conservative at every turn.)
• As COVID19 cases saturate virtually every state and county, which seems likely to happen any day now, it will soon be irresponsible for all HCWs to not wear a mask. These HCWs would burn through N95 stockpile in 2 days if each HCW only got ONE mask per day.
• One per day would be neither sanitary nor pragmatic, though this is indeed what we saw in Wuhan, with HCWs collapsing on their shift from dehydration because they were trying to avoid changing their PPE suits as they cannot be reused.
• How quickly could we ramp up production of new masks? Not very fast at all. The vast majority are manufactured overseas, almost all in China. Even when manufactured here in US, the raw materials are predominantly from overseas… again, predominantly from China.
• Keep in mind that all countries globally will be going through the exact same crises and shortages simultaneously. We can’t force trade in our favor.
• Now consider how these 2 factors – bed and mask shortages – compound each other’s severity. Full hospitals + few masks + HCWs running around between beds without proper PPE = very bad mix.
• HCWs are already getting infected even w/ access to full PPE. In the face of PPE limitations this severe, it’s only a matter of time. HCWs will start dropping from the workforce for weeks at a time, leading to a shortage of HCWs that then further compounds both issues above.
• We could go on and on about thousands of factors – # of ventilators, or even simple things like saline drip bags. You see where this is going.
• Importantly, I cannot stress this enough: even if I’m wrong – even VERY wrong – about core assumptions like % of severe cases or current case #, it only changes the timeline by days or weeks. This is how exponential growth in an immunologically naïve population works.
• Undeserved panic does no one any good. But neither does ill-informed complacency. It’s wrong to assuage the public by saying “only 2% will die.” People aren’t adequately grasping the national and global systemic burden wrought by this swift-moving of a disease.
• I’m an engineer. This is what my mind does all day: I run back-of-the-envelope calculations to try to estimate order-of-magnitude impacts. I’ve been on high alarm about this disease since ~Jan 19 after reading clinical indicators in the first papers emerging from Wuhan.
• Nothing in the last 6 weeks has dampened my alarm in the slightest. To the contrary, we’re seeing abject refusal of many countries to adequately respond or prepare. Of course some of these estimates will be wrong, even substantially wrong.
• But I have no reason to think they’ll be orders-of-magnitude wrong. Even if your personal risk of death is very, very low, don’t mock decisions like canceling events or closing workplaces as undue “panic”.
• These measures are the bare minimum we should be doing to try to shift the peak – to slow the rise in cases so that healthcare systems are less overwhelmed. Each day that we can delay an extra case is a big win for the HC system.
• And yes, you really should prepare to buckle down for a bit. All services and supply chains will be impacted. Why risk the stress of being ill-prepared?
• Worst case, I’m massively wrong and you now have a huge bag of rice and black beans to burn through over the next few months and enough Robitussin to trip out.
• One more thought: you’ve probably seen multiple respected epidemiologists have estimated that 20-70% of world will be infected within the next year. If you use 6-day doubling rate I mentioned above, we land at ~2-6 billion infected by sometime in July of this year.
• Obviously I think the doubling time will start to slow once a sizeable fraction of the population has been infected, simply because of herd immunity and a smaller susceptible population.
• But take the scenarios above (full beds, no PPE, etc, at just 1% of the US population infected) and stretch them out over just a couple extra months.
• That timeline roughly fits with consensus end-game numbers from these highly esteemed epidemiologists. Again, we’re talking about discrepancies of mere days or weeks one direction or another, but not disagreements in the overall magnitude of the challenge.
• This is not some hypothetical, fear-mongering, worst-case scenario. This is reality, as far as anyone can tell with the current available data.
• That’s all for now. Standard disclaimers apply: I’m a PhD biologist but *not* an epidemiologist. Thoughts my own. Yadda yadda. Stay safe out there. /end

Addendum: to anyone who found this useful or interesting, highly recommend you follow @trvrb who actually does modeling and forecasting for a living. This thread is a great place to start: https://t.co/zCljWPKK54 https://t.co/lXcRniXBR7

— Liz Specht (@LizSpecht) March 7, 2020

It wasn’t supposed to play out this way: on the day Jerome Powell surprised markets with an emergency intermeeting 50bps rate cut, the biggest cut by the Federal Reserve since 2008…

… stocks crashed, sparking a reflexive market panic because as BMO explained, “the biggest risk was always that by acting too proactively and aggressively Powell would signal that the situation is worse than initially feared. Check.” And indeed, following the the rate cut, volatility exploded in the subsequent days as traders panicked from one market extreme to the other, with the VIX eventually blowing out above 54 on Friday, its highest print since the Lehman failure (as a Chicago market-maker reportedly blew up).

Amid this series of volatile moves, the S&P 500 tumbled 12% from its all-time high of 3,386 hit less than three weeks ago on February 19, and 4% since the Fed delivered its cut.

Initially, US stocks fell by 13% over the span of just 7 trading sessions, the fastest 10% correction in the Dow Jones index since a few weeks before the Great Depression started.

From the market peak, the decline in equity prices has lowered the P/E multiple from 19.4x to 17.0x while 10-year US Treasury yields have fallen by 80 bp to the lowest level in history (0.77%). Put together, Goldman notes that the yield gap (S&P 500 earnings yield less 10-year US Treasury yield) has widened to 510 bp, the widest since 2013 and considerably wider than the long-term average of 230 bp.

And speaking of Goldman, the bank’s equity strategist David Kostin writes that – as one would expect – all its clients care about is the coronavirus correction. To allay their fears, the perpetually cheerful Kostin writes that his baseline assumption “is the COVID-19 virus becomes widespread but is relatively short-lived. We forecast flat earnings in 2020 followed by 6% growth in 2021. We estimate the yield gap will narrow to 395 bp by year-end as economic activity and confidence rebound, leading S&P 500 P/E to recover to 19.4x and the index to reach 3400, 14% above the current level.”

That’s the optimistic case.

In the not so optimistic one, Kostin admits that “the US  economy could slip into a recession if the coronavirus contagion lasts for an extended period of time”; as a reminder, just yesterday we noted that a global recession is now Bank of America’s baseline assumption. In such a situation, Goldman estimates S&P 500 EPS would fall by 13% to $143 in 2020 and the index would decline to 2450 by year-end.

Extending Kostin’s observations, he notes that under the surface of the S&P 500 volatile decline, “sector performance has been well-ordered” and since the S&P 500 peak, “realized sector performance has generally been in line with the return implied by each sector’s beta to S&P 500 (Exhibit 2).” Sectors with the most notable deviation from this trend have been Energy (-15% vs. -9% implied), which has been driven by the 23% decline in Brent crude oil prices to $46/bbl, and Financials (-11% vs. -8% implied), which has underperformed sharply given the large decline in interest rates.

Looking at distinct industries, travel stocks have been among the most heavily monkeyhammered as virus concerns have intensified. Airlines, Casinos, Hotels, and Cruises have underperformed S&P 500 by 19 pp since February 19 (Exhibit 3). United Airlines announced that it would be cutting flights in April due to weaker demand amid coronavirus concerns. News broke on Thursday that authorities are holding another Princess cruise ship off the coast of California after a passenger died from the coronavirus and hotels have warned that occupancy rates are likely to dip amidst increasing travel restrictions

Meanwhile, as we warned almost a month ago, semiconductor stocks have also come under pressure due to the industry’s outsized exposure to China. Semiconductors derives 85% of revenues from international sources, the highest of any S&P 500 industry group. 47% of sales come explicitly from Greater China. Despite a recent spate of negative guidance, the median semiconductors firm has experienced a 1-month 2020E EPS revision of just -0.2%. Goldman also cautions that while most companies have slashed 1Q guidance, they have not yet addressed the longer-term or full-year outlook.

Finally, looking at single-names, a number of companies we which Goldman had previously screened as secular growth stocks have also been hard-hit by virus concerns. While coronavirus may reduce the near-term earnings of some of these firms, certain companies have declined by more than 20%. Some of these secular growth companies trade at valuations below the 20th percentile relative to the past 5 years. In contrast, 19 S&P 500 stocks have actually generated a positive absolute return since the market’s recent peak. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which expects to have a vaccine ready for human trials by August, is the bestperforming stock and has risen by 23% during the past week. Gilead Sciences (GILD, +19%), Newmont Corp. (NEM, +13%), Kroger Co. (KR, +8%), and Campbell Soup (CPB, +8%) round out the top five stocks

* * *

It’s not just the coronavirus that is behind the market’s violent moves: also this week, Joe Biden celebrated a number of big
wins on Super Tuesday, increasing his prediction market-implied probability of winning the Democratic primary to 83% from as low as 7% in early February.

Biden currently leads with 664 pledged delegates compared to Senator Bernie Sanders’ 573 delegates. Candidates will need to amass 1991 delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot.

Managed Care stocks have outperformed sharply this week as the odds of a progressive candidate winning the Democratic nomination have fallen. During the last several months, Managed Care stocks have demonstrated the strongest sensitivity among US equity industries to the Democratic primary race. These stocks outperformed by 6% on Wednesday after Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday win dramatically decreased the perceived likelihood of major health care policy reform.

On the other hand, the recent performance of stocks with high tax rates appears to reflect the increasing likelihood that Democrats could control both the White House and Senate after November. Following Super Tuesday, the prediction market odds of a Democratic president have risen to the highest level since early February (49%) and the odds of Democratic control of the Senate have risen to the highest level in more than a year (41%). As Goldman previously noted, prospective changes to tax policy would likely be similar regardless of which Democratic candidate won the White House. Exhibit 5 shows a list of 40 S&P 500 stocks that experienced a large boost to earnings from the Tax and Jobs Act of 2017 and outperformed their beta-implied returns in the months following the law’s passage. These stocks have lagged the S&P 500 by 130 bp since Super Tuesday.

Democratic Party leader Nicola Zingarelli, one of the most powerful politicians in Italy, has tested positive for the coronavirus, Italian media reported on Saturday.

Zingarelli

Since the beginning of the outbreak, Italy has been the epicenter of the outbreak in Europe; on Friday, the total number of confirmed cases in the country climbed above 4,500, with 197 deaths confirmed.

“I have coronavirus too,” Zingaretti said in a video posted on Facebook, adding he was in self-isolation at home and that all the people he had been in contact with in the latest days were being contacted for checks. He said he was well.

As the outbreak has spread to nearly every country in North America, Asia and Europe. On Friday, Slovakia, the last remaining nation in Europe without any confirmed cases of the virus, confirmed its first case and almost immediately implemented a ban on flights from Italy, which has been blamed for spreading the virus across the continent, per NYT.

Since the number of new cases being confirmed outside China surpassed the number of new cases being confirmed inside China early last week, South Korea, Italy, Iran and now the US have emerged as the new epicenters, though Europe’s largest economies are all struggling with largely uncontained outbreaks.

Across Europe, bureaucrats have been hesitant to suspend Schengen area free-travel, allowing the virus to effortlessly spread across the continent.

🔘#COVID2019 Daily new confirmed cases in the 8 countries with the most confirmed cases

Visit📊https://t.co/lH0XPJPtBe & follow👉@covid2019app for the latest updates pic.twitter.com/QvL04WPjzJ

— Jo Di 🏳️‍🌈 (@jodigraphics15) March 7, 2020

Italy has been the European country hardest hit by the epidemic, with a total of 4,636 cases and 197 deaths on Friday, and is currently reporting more deaths per day form the virus than any other country in the world.

The coronavirus death toll in the United States reached 17 when Florida health officials reported two fatalities, the first in the state, late Friday, the Washington Post reports. They were the first deaths recorded outside the West Coast, where Washington State and California have emerged as the hardest hit states.

In Iran, officials reported 1,076 new cases of coronavirus and 21 new deaths on Saturday, bringing the total to 5,823 cases and 145 deaths. And a newly elected Iranina MP has died after two dozen Iranian lawmakers were infected, as well as several senior government officials.

In the Balkans, Bulgaria has closed all schools due to “influenza panic” – even though it’s only reported a handful of suspected cases.

Across the US, there are more than 300 cases reported (though not yet ‘confirmed’ by the CDC) and at least half of all states have confirmed cases. On Friday, Hawaii, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Nebraska, Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and South Carolina all confirmed their first cases of the virus. 

Over in the tri-state area, where the virus has spread rapidly, nearly 50 cases have been confirmed (between NYC area, NJ & Connecticut). Here’s a flow-chart showing the progression of infections in the NYC area.

Authored by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com,

This is it! The party is over. The world is now facing the gravest economic and social downturn in Modern Times (18th century).

We are now entering a period of global crisis that will change the world for a very long time to come. This should come as no surprise to the people who have studied history and also read my articles for the last few years. Many others have also warned about the same thing. But since MSM never talks about the excesses in the world or the risks, 99.9% of people are totally unprepared for what is coming next.

THE 4,000 POINT FALL IN THE DOW IS THE MERE BEGINNING

The 14% fall in the Dow last week and similar in many markets around the world is the mere beginning. I warned investors about this stock collapse in recent weeks. In my article on Jan 26, I wrote “Stock Collapse and Gold Surge Imminent” and again on Feb 9, I said “The Crisis will Propel Gold and Sink Stocks”. We have last week seen the beginning of the stock collapse with a 4,000 point fall in the Dow. The gold surge is still to come. We are likely to see further strong falls in stocks very soon.

Fundamentally, it has been clear for quite some time that stocks and the world economy are at the end of a secular bull market. The falls in the last week have confirmed that the party is over and that we are now starting a secular bear market that will affect the world for years and maybe decades.

THE DOW UP 40X IN 40 YEARS

The era of printed money and unlimited credit driving asset prices to ever dizzier heights is now over. If we take the Dow as one example, it has gone up 40x in the last 40 years. The average annual return has been 11.53% including reinvested dividends. This means that an investor in the Dow has doubled his money every 6 years, on average, over a 40 year period! So $25,000 invested in 1980 would be $2 million today.

The coming downturn will not take 40 years. When bubbles burst, everything unravels very quickly. It could take say 3-7 years for the Dow to come down 90% or more. In 1929-32 it took less than 3 years for the Dow to fall 90%. And the situation today is much more serious when it comes to overvaluations, debts, deficits etc.

STOCKS BONDS AND PROPERTY DOWN >90%

So the coming economic downturn will see all bubble assets like stocks, bonds and property decline at least 90% in real terms. But although markets might bottom within say the next 5 years, the world economy might go along the bottom for a very long time, which could be decades. As always, historians will let the world know afterwards the extent of the coming downturn.

The chart below shows potential targets for the Dow. In my view the 1970-80 level is more likely than the 2003-9 one.

CORONAVIRUS IS NOT THE CAUSE BUT THE CATALYST

Investors are obviously linking the stock market crashes to the Coronavirus but we must remember that the virus is not the cause of the falls but only the catalyst. Stocks around the world have been overvalued on many criteria for quite some time.

The majority of people today are not worried about stocks but instead about the Coronavirus. Most of us don’t understand it since authorities around the world suppress the truth when it comes to numbers of infected and fatalities. China seems never to have told the truth about the virus and many countries have followed suit.

The pandemic is spreading exponentially and it can take 3-4 weeks before it breaks out from the time you are infected. In that time every infected person can meet many hundreds of people. In Italy for example, there were no cases a few days ago and it jumped to 150 in a couple of days and now 2,500 are reported to have caught the disease with 80 deaths.

In Switzerland only 12 cases are reported but that will multiply quickly. All public events in Switzerland with more than 1,000 people have been banned. The Geneva International Motor Show due to start on Monday has been cancelled.

I am certainly no expert but it seems to me that it will be impossible to stop the spread of Coronavirus. Closing all factories, offices, schools, shops, railways, cinemas etc will paralyse the countries and the world economy. I would not be surprised if in the end governments tell people to continue as normal rather than to quarantine everyone. If the mortality rate is on average not more than 2%, this is a calculated risk that the authorities are likely to take.

To totally close down countries and production, leading to shortages of food and medicine, will probably kill more people over time than the virus itself.

FOR INVESTORS BAD NEWS IS GOOD NEWS – UNTIL NOW

So whilst ordinary people around the world are concerned with the Coronavirus, investors are focusing on crashing stock markets. Most people are blissfully unaware of the Dow’s biggest point fall ever last week of 4,000 points (14%) or similar falls in other world markets.

Investors love bad news like lower earnings or poor economic figures since this leads to more economic stimulus. So until a week ago, markets loved the fact that central banks around the world have embarked on what will be the biggest money printing exercise in history. Investors are not concerned about the reasons for the massive liquidity injections which are due to problems in the world’s financial system. Instead, more money printing means more credit and more cash availability for stock market investors. So bad news for the economy has created ever higher stocks reaching the sky.

Clearly, central banks will soon accelerate money printing and the ones that can, like the US, will lower rates. The 1/2% rate cut by the Fed on Tuesday seems like panic action. Since the effects in the US of the Coronavirus have so far been minor, the problems are clearly in the financial system. Lower rates, more repos, more QE etc. There are clearly major problems in the system.

The rate cut combined with money printing might create quick bounces in stocks, sucking everyone in. But this time money printing will only have a very brief effect. Because any correction up will be short lived and the subsequent big fall will be devastating. So this is definitely not the time to buy the dips. For anyone in the stock market, much better to get out on the bounces.

GOLD AT ALL TIME HIGHS IN MANY CURRENCIES

Precious metal investors are nervous because we are seeing a small setback. This is similar to 2008 when precious metals and the miners initially sold off strongly before they continued the rally. It is possible that the metals will correct further before they resume their uptrend. But the correction will be much smaller than in 2008.

In many currencies like pounds, Australian and Canadian dollars, gold is at the all time highs. It won’t be long before gold in US dollars will also reach a new high.

There should be no doubt that gold and silver will reflect the coming problems in the world economy and especially the guaranteed currency debasement that will take place due to unlimited money printing.

SELL THE DOW AND BUY GOLD

The Dow/Gold ratio tells the story. 

Since 1999, the Dow is down 65% against gold. Almost no stock market investor is aware of this fact. The Dow is down 30% against gold since Oct 2018 and has already fallen 15% in 2020.

I expect the ratio to initially each the 1980 level of 1 for 1. What the levels would be is hard to predict but let’s say Dow 10,000 and gold $10,000. Eventually I see the ratio falling below 1 to 1/2 or lower which would be in line with the long term trend line (not shown).

But even if the ratio fell to 1 only, it would involve stocks losing 94% against gold.

So quite a simple decision. Get out of all stocks as well as other bubble assets and buy physical gold as the best form of wealth preservation and insurance against the worst economic downturn in Modern Times (since the 18th century).

A five-story hotel that was reportedly being used as a temporary Covid-19 quarantine site has collapsed in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian on Saturday, state media reports. 

Emergency crews are frantically working to pull victims, who are apparently either all suspected or confirmed coronavirus cases, from the rubble. “23 people have been rescued as of 9pm local time. A total of 70 people were reportedly trapped under the collapsed building in Quanzhou, Fujian,” China’s People’s Daily reports.

Early video from hotel collapse aftermath shows a large area in which the building is reduced to ruble, with dozens of first responders combing through it.

#BREAKING: A hotel building collapsed in Quanzhou, SE China’s Fujian at around 7 pm Saturday, trapping an unknown number of people under it. So far 16 people have been rescued. Rescue work remains underway. pic.twitter.com/rK7tEagQvV

— People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) March 7, 2020

Local media said a total of 70 people were trapped under the rubble, with rescue efforts still underway.

A shocking overhead photograph of the destroyed building shows the building seemed to collapse in on itself and no part of its remains standing

The South China Morning Post has identified it as the Xinjia Hotel in Quanzhou. 

Reports SCMP, the hotel “collapsed just after 7pm, according to Mnw.cn, an online news site operated by the official Fujian Daily.”

Pictures posted by netizens on Chinese social media platform Weixin has revealed that the Xinjia Hotel, which is believed to be a #coronavirus quarantine site, has completely toppled down. As of 7.30 pm, 16 people have been rescued, according to Chinese media. pic.twitter.com/ex93XNxzx6

— Ezra Cheung (@ezracheungtoto) March 7, 2020

Local Chinese reports as well as international media are saying it was being used as a Covid-19 quarantine site. 

#BREAKING: A five-storey hotel in Quanzhou in the Fujian province suddenly collapses on March 7 evening. Several Chinese media outlets say that the hotel is currently being used as a quarantine site for #COVIDー19. About a dozen have been rescued. Internet video. pic.twitter.com/dMIJivGXlI

— Ezra Cheung (@ezracheungtoto) March 7, 2020

Casualties are expected to mount in the wake of the tragedy, however, dozens are still trapped under the rubble, with rescue efforts to continue through the night.

Subsequent reports from the scene say at least 28 people have been rescued as of three hours after the hotel’s collapse.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Former Tesco supply chain director Bruno Monteyne warns that a large scale outbreak of coronavirus in the UK could lead to “food riots,” requiring the army to be used to guard supermarkets.

Monteyne said that supermarkets would have to resort to drastic measures and revert to “feed the nation status” under a worse case scenario.

He also cautioned that grocery stores would have trouble stocking shelves and delivering goods if their employees decided to self-isolate.

“Yes, it will be chaotic (and expect pictures of empty shelves),” wrote Mr Monteyne, “but the industry will reduce complexity to keep the country fed.”

He said that the army may need to be drafted in to guard stores and prevent disorder.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he was “confident” food supplies would not run out and that there was “absolutely no need” to panic-buy.

Hancock also claimed that supermarkets could deliver food to coronavirus patients who had self-isolated, although this claim was immediately put in doubt by one supermarket executive, who said he was “baffled” by the suggestion.

“Matt Hancock has totally made up what he said about working with supermarkets. We haven’t heard anything from government directly,” the executive said, adding, “I’m not sure the government can guarantee all food supply in all instances.”

A source at another supermarket told the BBC that there had been no detailed planning involving government departments about “ensuring uninterrupted food supplies.”

Panic buying continued across the UK today, with supermarket shelves of goods like hand sanitizer, toilet paper and medicine.

The number of coronavirus cases in the UK has now reached 163, with two deaths.

*  *  *

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With the daily soaring infection rate and death toll inside Iran officially at 124 deaths amid 4747 confirmed cases as of early Friday — though true numbers are believed much higher — all eyes are on the largely unprepared country given it’s the biggest outbreak epicenter outside the virus’ origin country of China.

Health officials worry that Iran could be a sign of things to come in the much of the rest of the world — a deeply alarming prospect given a member of Iran’s National Committee for Influenza and specialist in infectious diseases, Dr. Masoud Mardani, has just issued a stark warning for the capital city of Tehran, brimming with about 9 million people and over 12 million in the greater metropolitan area. 

Dr. Mardai said he expects 30 to 40 percent of Tehran’s population to be infected with coronavirus within the next two weeks.

He was quoted in state media as saying:

“Coronavirus is rapidly spreading … we estimate that 30 to 40 percent of Tehran’s population will be infected by the end of this (Persian) month.”

The current Persian month is the last month of the Persian calendar and ends on March 20, Al Arabiya English notes. 

According to a summary of his statements given to an Iranian newspaper, he said further: 

…an infected person could transmit the virus to four people at the same time. Therefore it is expected that 30-40 per cent of Tehran’s population will be infected with the virus by March.

He pointed out that many Iranians visit health centers and hospitals when they have regular flu, believing it is a coronavirus.

Dr. Mardai is urging people who think they’re sick to stay home instead of potentially infecting overcrowding medical clinics and hospitals.

#coronavirus Iran: Population seeking help in hospitals for coronavirus. “We estimate that 30 to 40% of Tehran’s population will be infected with COVID-19 by March 20,” says Dr. Massoud Mardani, member of Iran’s National Influenza Committee. Tehran population: 12 million. pic.twitter.com/vs8kfsm229

— nerd (@nerd_hawk) March 6, 2020

He said further:

Instead, they should receive treatment at home rather than hospitals in these circumstances. He pointed out that if the patient feels the three distinctive symptoms of the coronavirus; then he must be immediately transferred to the hospital and be subjected to quarantine.

This further means that the next two weeks could see overall global numbers of confirmed cases soar, if his predictions are correct. 

Even though Iran’s official confirmed Covid-19 cases are in the thousands, it was over a week ago that specialists were already speculating that the true number had already reached 20,000 at that point.

Inability for rapid and effective testing, as well as alleged lack of transparency especially in the early weeks of the outbreak, means we will likely see numbers explode exponentially as has already been happening over the past days.