Images From New York’s First Drive-Thru Testing Facility
Just as Gov. Cuomo promised on Thursday, New York’s first coronavirus drive-through testing center opened Friday morning in New Rochelle, and is up and running, collecting samples from anxious New Yorkers in the Westchester County town that has emerged as a hot spot for the national epidemic.
Along with a nursing home in Kirkland, Wash., where roughly two dozen patients have died of the virus, New Rochelle has emerged as one of the worst hot spots over the past two weeks since a lawyer from the community became its patient zero.
“This is drive-thru testing – something I didn’t hear of last week, but we’re doing this week,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
Drive-through testing means people in this community can call a telephone number, make an appointment, and they can come to be tested and literally drive through the testing facilities.”
This isn’t the first drive-thru coronavirus testing site in the country – the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota has set one up, as we reported earlier in the week. And others are popping out around the country.
As President Trump confirmed during Saturday’s task force press conference, there have been 50 deaths across the US.
The set-up includes six drive-through lanes to handle 200 cars a day, Cuomo said. That’s about 15 minutes per car, he said. The medical staff will come to the car, perform two tests per person and then send the swabs to BioReference Laboratories, the research lab in the state charged with processing. The process can be seen in the video below:
Here’s another video:
Since the entire New Rochelle school district is shut down, maybe the kids can come out and do a coronavirus drive through car wash and bake sale fundraiser? With everybody maintaining the proper ‘four-foot social distance’.
If you haven’t seen the movie “The Revenant” with Leonardo DiCaprio, it is a 2015 American survival drama describing frontiersman Hugh Glass’s experiences in 1823. Early in the movie, Hugh, an expert hunter, and tracker, is mauled by a grizzly bear. (Warning: the scene is very graphic)
In the scene, the attack comes in three distinct waves.
The bear attacks, and brutally mauls Hugh, who plays dead to survive. The attack subsides.
The bear comes back, and Huge shoots it, provoking the bear to maul him some more.
Finally, Huge pulls out his knife as the bear attacks for a final fight to the death.(Hugh wins if you don’t want to watch the video.)
Interestingly, this is also how a “bear market” works.
Bear markets have three stages – sharp down, reflexive rebound and a drawn-out fundamental downtrend
Bear markets often START with a sharp and swift decline.
After this decline, there is an oversold bounce that retraces a portion of that decline.
The longer-term decline then continues, at a slower and more grinding pace, as the fundamentals deteriorate.
Dow Theory also suggests that bear markets consist of three down legs with reflexive rebounds in between.
The chart above shows the stages of the last two primary cyclical bear markets versus today (the 2020 scale has been adjusted to match.)
As would be expected, the “Phase 1” selloff has been brutal.
That selloff sets up a “reflexive bounce.” For many individuals, they will “feel like” they are “safe.” This is how “bear market rallies” lure investors back in just before they are mauled again in “Phase 3.”
Just like in 2000, and 2008, the media/Wall Street will be telling you to just “hold on.” Unfortunately, by the time “Phase 3” was finished, there was no one wanting to “buy” anything.
One of the reasons we are fairly certain of a further decline is due to the dual impacts of the “COVID-19” virus, and oil price shock. As noted in our MacroView:
“With the U.S. now shutting down and entrenching itself in response to the virus, the economic impact will be worsened. However, given that economic data is lagging, and we only have numbers that were mostly pre-virus, the reports over the next couple of months will ultimately reveal the extent of the damage.
With oil prices now at $30/bbl and 10-year breakeven rates to 0.9%, the math is significantly worse, and that is what the severity of the recent selloff is telling us. Over the next two quarters, we could see as much as a 3% clip off of current GDP.”
Unfortunately, while asset prices have declined, they have likely not fully accounted for the impact to earnings, permanently lost revenues, and the recessionary impact from falling consumer confidence. Historically, the gap between asset prices and corporate profits gets filled.
“What we know, with almost absolute certainty, is that we will be in an economic recession within the next couple of quarters. We also know that earnings estimates are still way too elevated to account for the disruption coming from the COVID-19.”
“What we DON’T KNOW is where the ultimate bottom for the market is. All we can do is navigate the volatility to the best of our ability and recalibrate portfolios to adjust for downside risk without sacrificing the portfolio’s ability to adjust for a massive ” bazooka-style ” monetary intervention from global Central Banks if needed quickly.
This is why, over the last 6-weeks, we have been getting more “defensive” by increasing our CASH holdings to 15% of the portfolio, with our 40% in bonds doing the majority of the heavy lifting in mitigating the risk in our remaining equity holdings.
Interestingly, the Federal Reserve DID show up on Thursday as expected. In a statement from the New York Fed:
The Federal Reserve said it would inject more than $1.5 trillion of temporary liquidity into Wall Street on Thursday and Friday to prevent ominous trading conditions from creating a sharper economic contraction.
If the transactions are fully subscribed, they would swell the central bank’s $4.2 trillion asset portfolio by more than 35%.” – WSJ
As you can see in the chart below, this is a massive surge of liquidity hitting the market at a time the market is sitting on critical long-term trend support.
Of course, this is what the market has been hoping for.
Rate cuts? Check
Liquidity? Check
On Friday, the market surged, and ALMOST recouped the previous day’s losses. (Sorry, it wasn’t President Trump’s speech that boosted the market.)
However, this rally, and liquidity flush, most likely does not negate the continuation of the bear market. The amount of technical damage combined with a recession, and a potential surge in credit defaults almost ensures another leg of the beg market is yet to come.
A look at the charts can also help us better understand where we currently reside.
Trading The Bounce
In January, when we discussed taking profits out of our portfolios, we noted the markets were trading at 3-standard deviations above their 200-dma, which suggested a pullback, or correction, was likely.
Now, it is the same comment in reverse. The correction over the last couple of weeks has completely reversed the previous bullish exuberance into extreme pessimism. On a daily basis, the market is back to oversold. Historically, this condition has been sufficient for a bounce. Given the oversold condition (top panel) is combined with a very deep “sell signal” in the bottom panel, it suggests a fairly vicious reflexive rally is likely as we saw on Friday.
The question, of course, is where do you sell?
Looking at the chart above, it is possible for a rally to the 38.2%, or 50% retracement levels. However, with the severity of the break below the 200-dma, the 61.8% retracement level, where the 200-dma now resides, will be very formidable resistance. With the Fed’s liquidity push, it is possible for a strong “Phase 2” rally. Our plan will be to reduce equity exposure at each level of resistance and increase our equity hedges before the “Phase 3” mauling ensues.
The following chart is a longer-term analysis of the market and is the format we use for “onboarding” our clients into allocation models. (Vertical black lines are buy periods)
“But Lance, how do you know that Friday wasn’t THE bottom?”
A look at longer-term time-frames gives us some clues.
With all of our longer-term weekly “sell signals” now triggered from fairly high levels, it suggests the current selloff is not over as of yet. In other words, we will see a rally, followed by a secondary failure to lower lows, before the ultimate bottom is put in.
I have mapped out the three most logical secondary bottoms for the market, so you can assess your portfolio risk accordingly.
A retest of current lows that holds is a 27% decline.
A retest of the 2018 lows, most likely, is an average recessionary decline of 32.8%
A retest of the 2016 lows, coincident with a “credit event,” would entail a 50.9% decline.
Given the weekly signals have only recently triggered, we can look at monthly data to confirm we still remain confined to a “bearish market” currently.
On a monthly basis, sell signals have been triggered. However, these signals are NOT VALID until the end of the month. However, given the depth of the decline, it would likely require a rally back to all-time highs to reverse those signals. This is a very high improbability.
Assuming the signals remain, there is an important message being sent, as noted in the top panel. The “negative divergence” of relative strength has only been seen prior to the start of the previous two bear markets, and the 2015-2016 slog. While the current selloff resembles what we saw in late 2015, there is a risk of this developing into a recessionary bear market later this summer. The market is holding the 4-year moving average, which is “make or break” for the bull market trend from the 2009 lows.
However, we suspect those levels will eventually be taken out. Caution is advised.
What We Are Thinking
Since January, we have been regularly discussing taking profits in positions, rebalancing portfolio risks, and, most recently, moving out of areas subject to slower economic growth, supply-chain shutdowns, and the collapse in energy prices. This led us to eliminate all holdings in international, emerging markets, small-cap, mid-cap, financials, transportation, industrials, materials, and energy markets.(RIAPRO Subscribers were notified real-time of changes to our portfolios.)
There is “some truth” to the statement “that no one” could have seen the fallout of the “coronavirus” being escalated by an “oil price” war. However, there have been mounting risks for quite some time from valuations, to price deviations, and a complete disregard of risk by investors. While we have been discussing these issues with you, and making you aware of the risks, it was often deemed as “just being bearish” in the midst of a “bullish rally.”However, it is managing these types of risks, which is ultimately what clients pay advisors for.
It isn’t a perfect science. In times like these, it gets downright messy. But this is where working to preserve capital and limit drawdowns becomes most important. Not just from reducing the recovery time back to breakeven, but in also reducing the “psychological stress,” which leads individuals to make poor investment decisions over time.
As noted last week:
“Given the extreme oversold and deviated measures of current market prices, we are looking for a reflexive rally that we can further reduce risk into, add hedges, and stabilize portfolios for the duration of the correction. When it is clear, the correction, or worse a bear market, is complete, we will reallocate capital back to equities at better risk/reward measures.”
We highly suspect that we have seen the highs for the year. Most likely, we are moving into an environment where portfolio management will be more tactical in nature, versus buying and holding.
Take some action on this rally.
If this is a “Phase 2” relief rally of a bear market, you really don’t want to be around for the “final mauling.”
Another Wave Of Rockets Slam Into Camp Taji, Wounding 3 US Troops
A US airbase just north of the Iraqi capital has come under more major rocket fire a mere days after an initial attack killed one British and two American soldiers. A US defense official has told Reuters that three American troops were wounded in the attack.
Iraqi security officials separately confirmed Saturdaya barrage of some 33 rockets were fired on the base, also injuring multiple Iraqi national forces – some critically – in the early morning hours. And US coalition statements indicated at least 25 107mm rockets hit the base before 11 am, according to the AP.
Unusually this latest attack came during the daylight hours and also followed major US airstrikes Thursday night which targeted at least 5 Kataib Hezbollah locations across southern Iraq. It appears that Iraqi Shia militias are attempting to draw ‘red lines’ — and feel emboldened to respond to the earlier American airstrikes given growing Iraqi government anger at Washington.
Iraqi Army file image, via AFP/Getty Images
The Pentagon had immediately blamed the large Iran-backed militia for killing US troops in the initial Wednesday assault.
Many analysts and pundits fear this is the start of yet another tit-for-tat between the US and Iran and its proxies leading to significant military escalation, similar to the series of events which paved the way for the US killing by drone of IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani on January 3rd. Since then, the two have been on a war footing, despite things cooling a bit of late as the region and the world grapples with the pressing threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
Interestingly, all of this is a source of soaring tensions between uneasy allies Baghdad and Washington, given Iraq’s government immediately condemned the Thursday Pentagon ‘retaliation’ attack on Kataib Hezbollah, which it said killed five Iraqi security force members and a civilian.
Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Robert and Army Spc. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubia. Source: Stars & Stripes/US Army
Meanwhile, top US forces general in the region, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, brushed Baghdad’s condemnation aside, essentially saying it was Iraqi forces’ fault for being there. But many officers in the Iraqi Army essentially see Khatib Hezbollah as a de facto extension of national forces.
“These locations that we struck are clear locations of terrorist bases,” McKenzie said Friday. When asked about Iraq’s fierce response, he said, “If Iraqi military forces are there, I would say it’s probably not a good idea to position yourself with Khatib Hezbollah in the wake of a strike that killed Americans and Coalition members.”
Via AFP
But assuming it is Iran-backed Iraqi militias behind this newest Saturday morning rocket volley on Camp Taji, it appears Khatib Hezbollah or its Shia allies in the Iraqi military didn’t get the message.
Watch Live: White House Coronavirus Task Force Delivers Status Update
Now that Democrats and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have managed to strike a deal on the federal Covid-19 economic rescue package, which Trump said he fully supports, the White House task force is holding another press conference to update the public on the coronavirus containment effort.
Notably, Trump announced the press conference shortly after the White House announced that it was implemented new procedures lie mandatory temperature checks for everybody coming into close contact with the president (including reporters in the briefing room).
Though, if this truly is another task force update, it’s possible that Trump won’t play a big role, though he has shown a penchant for stealing the spotlight from Pence and the team.
Bridgewater’s Macro Fund Crashes 20% Amid Historic Turmoil
On Friday we were amused to report that just six weeks after billionaire Sinophile investor, Burning Man connoisseur, and author of “principles”, Ray Dalio announced during this year’s Davos boondoggle that “cash is trash“…
… not only did the market suffer its biggest crash since the financial crisis, but as investors pulled money out of all risk assets at a record pace, the inflows to cash – at $137 billion – were the biggest ever.
And as it turned out that cash was the exact opposite of trash, we mused that “it is hot takes like these that make us wonder if all those apocryphal rumors about how Bridgewater became the world’s biggest hedge fund are actually true.”
One day later it is almost as if Bloomberg read our mind (and blog) because picking up on this wonder, Bloomberg reported that Dalio’s macro fund – not his risk-parity All Weather fund – plunged 20% this year as the billionaire fund manager found himself on the wrong side of a market rout caused by the escalating coronavirus pandemic. Citing sources, Bloomberg reports that Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha Fund II which manages roughly $80 billion, tumbled roughly 13% this month through Thursday, following an 8% drop in the first two months of the year.
The good news: Dalio’s catastrophic Davos take was basically talking his book, and not the other side of it as so many banks do these days; indeed the Bridgewater founder offered a fairly rosy outlook for markets as recently as last month, when he said in mid-February that investor concerns over the virus “probably had a bit of an exaggerated effect on the pricing of assets because of the temporary nature of that, so I would expect more of a rebound.”
Then just last week, Dalio tripled down, when the famous creator of workplace “principles” tweeted words of encouragement as markets crashed, saying “look for the opportunities” but only after protecting against “the risk of ruin”, and yet protecting the risk of ruin usually involves holding on to substantial amounts of cash, so… which is it?”
Periods of turbulence provide both large risks and large opportunities, so after you make sure that you and your people are safe from the risk of ruin, look for the opportunities. It is because at such times most people pay the most attention to the risks than the opportunities. pic.twitter.com/gvkv4LLNJc
Bridgewater’s February performance is poised to be the worst month on record for the Pure Alpha II strategy, whose worst month until now was a 10.5% drop in April 2008 around the time of the Bear Stearns collapse. Ironically, it was just in November when Dalio made a big stink at the WSJ for daring to suggest that he was betting on a market crash:
The Wall Street Journal wrote an article that said “Bridgewater Bets Big on Market Drop.” It’s wrong. I want to make clear that we don’t have any such net bet that the stock market will fall.
In retrospect, after such a catastrophic performance to start 2020, he should have as the fund’s LPs will soon make abundantly clear as they pull their money out of the fund.
That said, Pure Alpha’s implosion is only half the story: following last week’s historic VaR shock which saw the biggest Risk Parity unwind of all time…
… what we would like to know is whether Bridgewater’s All Weather risk parity fund was also behind the cataclysmic gyrations in the market that culminated in a broad-based liquidation of pretty much everything. We hope to find out soon enough.
Spain Declares National Lockdown, Apple Closes All Stores Outside Greater China, US Death Toll Nears 50: Virus Updates
While EU bureaucrats in Brussels slammed President Trump over the European travel ban, claiming that he left them in the dark with his “unilateral” action, Spain – one of Europe’s largest countries, and the fourth-largest economy in the eurozone – on Sunday said it would adopt a draconian national travel ban on par with the national lockdown taking place in Italy.
On Friday, Sanchez declared the emergency for 15 days, saying that Spain would “mobilize all resources,” including the military, to contain the virus and help reverse the sharp rise in new infections over the past week. Part of the powers invoked by Sanchez allow the federal government to restrict movement of the Spanish people, to legally confiscate items and to seize control of Spanish industrial output – presumably a relic of Spain’s authoritarian past that makes this lockdown more similar to the Chinese Communist Party’s lockdown than anything happening in Italy. Even private hospitals can be commandeered for the government effort. The government can even impose ‘special measures’ to guarantee the food supply for the country. Even April elections in two northern regions could be delayed, the government said.
The decision came after Spain’s case total surpassed 4,000, and deaths climbed above 100. More cases and deaths were reported Saturday morning, along with the latest details about the Spanish emergency measures, which appear to be even more thorough than initially believed. On Saturday, total cases passed 5,000, and the number of confirmed deaths neared 200.
Then on Saturday, the Spanish government decided to kick things up a notch, perhaps having realized that the outbreak is now out of control and more restrictive controls on movement would be needed to contain it.
Spain’s Interior Ministry said Saturday that it would assu,e direct control of all police forces in the country, allowing them to direct police to enforce quarantines, with deadly force if necessary. In Madrid, the epicenter of the Spanish outbreak, a state of emergency will be imposed, including a curfew and lockdown measures intended to restrict movement and ensure social distancing.
El Pais, Spain’s newspaper of record, reported Saturday that the government had prepared a draft decree similar to Italy’s declaring a ‘nationwide lockdown’. According to reports, the lockdown will be rolled out nationwide on Monday, and people would only be able to go out to either work or buy essential items.
As the eurozone’s fourth largest country, Spain has a population of 47 million, roughly 13 million fewer people than Italy.
So far, no news of the lockdown has appeared on official government accounts. Earlier, PM Sanchez tweeted a PSA about ‘social distancing’ and hygiene practices.
Los profesionales sanitarios nos protegen con entrega y sacrificio, pero todos tenemos una misión frente al #Covid19.
Los mayores deben protegerse, evitar a toda costa la exposición. Los jóvenes tienen que mantener la distancia social para frenar contagios. Su papel será crucial. pic.twitter.com/nrWKGCQM6A
Already, airlines are cancelling flights over Spain’s new measure. British travel company Jet2 has canceled all flights to mainland Spain, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. The cancellations were a result of Spain’s new measures, per CNN.
In the Netherlands, which has also seen an alarming spike in cases over the last week, confirmed on Saturday that infections had climbed by 155 TO 959, with two more deaths, while many cases and deaths likely remain unconfirmed.
On the corporate side of things, Apple announced Saturday morning that it would shutter all of its stores outside Greater China. The decision is notably ironic seeing as Apple just finished opening the last of its stores on the mainland late this week. The stores will be closed until March 27.
According to CNN, the company also pledged to commit $15 million to help with the worldwide recovery from the outbreak, “both to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic.”
In the US, while Walmarts, Targets and groceries across the country remain oddly barren of toilet paper, the Pentagon on Saturday suspended all domestic travel for personnel and their families during the outbreak. The new restrictions apply to “all DoD military and civilian personnel and their families assigned to DoD installations, facilities and surrounding areas within the US and its territories,” the department said in the statement, according to BBG.
Overnight, the death toll in the states climbed to 49 as Washington re-took the lead in total confirmed cases from New York, which held it briefly for a few hours Friday afternoon.
Across the US, 46,000 schools have closed, are scheduled to close, or were closed and later reopened, because of the virus outbreak, as 12 states declare two or three-week closures. At least 21 million students in the United States have been or will be affected by the closures. The acting ambassador from Brazil, who attended the dinner with Trump and Pence and Bolsonaro and his infected comms director, has tested positive for Covid-19 after reporting symptoms. But though some said that Trump sounded a little hoarse at yesterday’s press conference, he and his doctors insist he isn’t showing any symptoms.
A Rhode Island elementary school student who got an autograph from one of the Utah Jazz players who tested positive for the virus has also tested positive, shining another uncomfortable light on one player (Rudy Gomert’s) nonchalant and mocking behavior toward the virus, which clearly has a twisted sense of humor.
First Masks, Then Purell, Now Americans Panic Hoard Immunity-Boosting Products Amid Pandemic
The order has been relatively straight forward: Americans started panic hoarding 3M N-95 masks as early as mid-January, then loaded up on food and medical supplies in the last several weeks, including water, non-perishables, bleach, and Purell. Now it appears the next run has started, that is, immunity-boosting supplements as the Covid-19 virus crisis has morphed into a pandemic, expected to worsen in the weeks ahead.
Take, for example, Airborne Vitamin C 1000mg tablets (36 count box), currently unavailable from the Amazon seller Airborne, with other sellers making up the product over 100% from suggested retail price of about $16. This suggests, Americans are panic buying dietary supplements to boost their immune systems amid the virus outbreak.
Another dietary supplement to boost the immune system is Immune Support Packets, “currently unavailable” on the Amazon store via designs for health.
Here’s Rainbow Light Counter Attack, a product that supports immune system health, “currently unavailable” on the Rainbow Light’s Amazon store.
Panic hoarding products are evolving on a weekly basis. Last week Purell, this week it is immunity-boosting supplements. And the panic is for a good reason: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was quoted by Reuters on Friday morning as saying, “the next few weeks, for most Americans, what you’re going to see is an acceleration of cases.”
And with that being said, what do Americans panic hoard next week? Weapons and ammunition? Well, that has already started…
The ban on single-use plastic grocery bags is unsanitary – and it comes at the worst imaginable time…
The COVID-19 outbreak is giving new meaning to those “sustainable” shopping bags that politicians and environmentalists have been so eager to impose on the public. These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses—and spread the viruses throughout the store.
Researchers have been warning for years about the risks of these bags spreading deadly viral and bacterial diseases, but public officials have ignored their concerns, determined to eliminate single-use bags and other plastic products despite their obvious advantages in reducing the spread of pathogens. In New York State, a new law took effect this month banning single-use plastic bags in most retail businesses, and this week Democratic state legislators advanced a bill that would force coffee shops to accept consumers’ reusable cups—a practice that Starbucks and other chains have wisely suspended to avoid spreading the COVID-19 virus.
John Flanagan, the Republican leader of the New York State Senate, has criticized the new legislation and called for a suspension of the law banning plastic bags. “Senate Democrats’ desperate need to be green is unclean during the coronavirus outbreak,” he said Tuesday, but so far he’s been a lonely voice among public officials.
The COVID-19 virus is just one of many pathogens that shoppers can spread unless they wash the bags regularly, which few people bother to do. Viruses and bacteria can survive in the tote bags up to nine days, according to one study of coronaviruses.
The risk of spreading viruses was clearly demonstrated in a 2018 study published in the Journal of Environmental Health. The researchers, led by Ryan Sinclair of the Loma Linda University School of Public Health, sent shoppers into three California grocery stores carrying polypropylene plastic tote bags that had been sprayed with a harmless surrogate of a virus.
After the shoppers bought groceries and checked out, the researchers found sufficiently high traces of the surrogate to risk transmission on the hands of the shoppers and checkout clerks, as well as on many surfaces touched by the shoppers, including packaged food, unpackaged produce, shopping carts, checkout counters, and the touch screens used to pay for groceries. The researchers said that the results warranted the adaptation of “in-store hand hygiene” and “surface disinfection” by merchants, and they also recommended educating shoppers to wash their bags.
An earlier study of supermarkets in Arizona and California found large numbers of bacteria in almost all the reusable bags—and no contamination in any of the new single-use plastic bags. When a bag with meat juice on the interior was stored in the trunk of a car, within two hours the number of bacteria multiplied tenfold.
The researchers also found that the vast majority of shoppers never followed the advice to wash their bags. One of the researchers, Charles Gerba of the University of Arizona, said that the findings “suggest a serious threat to public health,” particularly from fecal coliform bacteria, which was found in half the bags. These bacteria and other pathogens can be transferred from raw meat in the bag and also from other sources. An outbreak of viral gastroenteritis among a girls’ soccer team in Oregon was traced to a resuable grocery bag that had sat on the floor of a hotel bathroom.
In a 2012 study, researchers analyzed the effects of San Francisco’s ban on single-use plastic grocery bags by comparing emergency-room admissions in the city against those of nearby counties without the bag ban. The researchers, Jonathan Klick of the University of Pennsylvania and Joshua Wright of George Mason University, reported a 25 percent increase in bacteria-related illnesses and deaths in San Francisco relative to the other counties. The city’s Department of Public Health disputed the findings and methodology but acknowledged that “the idea that widespread use of reusable bags may cause gastrointenstinal infections if they are not regularly cleaned is plausible.”
New York’s state officials were told of this risk before they passed the law banning plastic bags. In fact, as the Kings County Politics website reported, a Brooklyn activist, Allen Moses, warned that shoppers in New York City could be particularly vulnerable because they often rest their bags on the floors of subway cars containing potentially deadly bacteria from rats—and then set the bag on the supermarket checkout counter. Yet public officials remain committed to reusable bags.
A headline on the website of the New York Department of Health calls reusable grocery bags a “Smart Choice” – bizarre advice, considering all the elaborate cautions underneath that headline. The department advises grocery shoppers to segregate different foods in different bags; to package meat and fish and poultry in small disposable plastic bags inside their tote bags; to wash and dry their tote bags carefully; to store the tote bags in a cool, dry place; and never to reuse the grocery tote bags for anything but food.
How could that possibly be a “smart choice” for public health? Anyone who has studied consumer behavior knows that it’s hopelessly unrealistic to expect people to follow all those steps. If the Department of Health actually prioritized public health, it would acknowledge what food manufacturers and grocers have known for decades: disposable plastic is the cheapest, simplest, and safest way to prevent foodborne illnesses.
Instead, leaders in New York and other states are ordering shoppers to make a more expensive, inconvenient, and risky choice—all to serve a green agenda that’s actually harmful to the environment. The ban on plastic bags will mean more trash in landfills (because paper bags take up so much more space than the thin disposable bags) and more greenhouse emissions (because of the larger carbon footprints of the replacement bags). And now, probably, it will also mean more people coming down with COVID-19 and other illnesses.
UK’s Coronavirus Strategy: Just Let It Happen And Hope For Herd Immunity
The British government’s strategy to deal with the coronavirus outbreak is for 60% of the UK to become infected in order to develop “herd immunity” against the disease, according to The Independent.
In other words, when the thus-far unstoppable virus ravages England, it was all part of the plan.
“We think this virus is likely to be one that comes back year on year and becomes like a seasonal virus and communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this in the longer term,” said the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, who added “60% is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.“
According to Vallance, isolating the population would only temporarily suppress the virus, but it would quickly re-emerge and the crisis would be repeated.
“If you completely locked down absolutely everything probably for a period of four months or more then you would suppress this virus,” he said, adding “All of the evidence from previous epidemics suggests that when you do that and then you release it, it all comes back again.“
Vallance’s comments echo those made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier in the week, when he said the UK might have to just “take it on the chin.”
UNBELIEVEABLE – Johnson seriously suggests on TV to let #coronavirus run unhampered thru UK population.
Johnson proposes to let us “take it on the chin” & “allow the disease to move through the population”.
In other words… do nothing & accept death rates >10% for elderly. pic.twitter.com/FmBNUL2oRB
One possible flaw in their logic with encouraging roughly 40 million people to catch COVID-19 (which, even with a fatality rate of even 1 means 400,000 dead) – is that Chinese scientists have observed coronavirus patients relapsing and not walking away from the disease with natural immunity.
“For those patients who have been cured, there is a likelihood of a relapse,” Zhan Qingyuan, the director of pneumonia prevention and treatment at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, said during a press conference last month.
“The antibody will be generated,” said Zhan.
“However, in certain individuals, the antibody cannot last that long.”
And according to Futurism, herd immunity – such as the idea behind “chicken pox parties” may or may not be a viable strategy.
The underlying idea behind a vaccination — or even “chicken pox parties” — is that exposure to a virus will trigger the immune system to generate antibodies that will shield that person from that virus in the future. But according to Chinese health officials, the antibodies created after a 2019-nCoV infection aren’t always strong enough to keep patients from getting sick again. –Futurism
Another issue is that between 10% – 15% of those infected require hospitalization, meaning roughly 4-6 million Britons would need an ICU – which typically means some type of oxygen support such as a ventilator. According tothe NHS, there are roughly 100,000 overnight beds available (‘general’ and ‘acute’) at any given time.
So what happens to the mortality rate when that same 10-15% of coronavirus patients who need hospitalization don’t have access to medical care, including life-saving ventilators?
How far do governments have to go in restricting the movements of its citizens to combat COVID-19?
This is an important question, because right now the most complete data set on how quickly it can be contained (or something close) come from China.
To compare the efficacy of China’s measures to those in other cities around the world, let’s start with current data through today from TomTom’s local traffic congestion readings for Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak (red line is current, blue line is 2019 average road congestion):
That’s our benchmark: extremely low levels of traffic congestion, some 80-95% below normal levels.
Next, let’s look at 2 major Italian cities:
Milan (near the center of the country’s outbreak) and Rome (capital city):
Milan:
Rome:
What we see: rather than traffic congestion being down +90% from normal, in Milan and Rome over the last 2 days it is only averaging 60% below average 2019 levels. A meaningful reduction, to be sure, but nothing like Wuhan.
Now, here are 3 European capital cities to consider:
Paris:
Berlin:
London:
What we see: a small decline in Paris versus the end of last week, but none in Berlin or London. Not good…
Finally, 3 US cities with large numbers of COVID-19 cases:
New York:
San Francisco:
Seattle:
What we see: work-from-home is clearly having an impact this week as compared to late last week, especially in NY and San Francisco. None, however, look anything like Wuhan.
Takeaway from these comparisons:
Authoritarian China was able to curtail human activity in ways western countries have thus far not come close to replicating. It is too early to say if that difference will yield materially different trajectories for the spread of COVID-19. There are many other factors to consider, after all, ranging from environment to public awareness and personal actions. Still, the data here shows what western countries may have to consider if their slower actions thus far fail to contain the virus.
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