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Authored by Elias Marat via TheMindUnleashed.com,

Enjoying a small bit of booze on a daily basis could actually help boost your life-span to a healthy 90 years of age, researchers have found.

The study, spearheaded by a team of scientists at Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, discovered that men and women who indulge in a daily drink are 40 percent more likely to reach their 90th birthday than those who completely abstain.

But before folks get carried away, it is important to note that the benefits of booze are restricted to those who stick to one daily drink, as binge-drinkers are prone to die earlier.

While women can benefit most from drinking wine, men were found to benefit most from such liquors as brandy, gin, and whiskey.

For the study, lead researcher Prof. Piet van den Brandt and his team tracked the drinking habits of over 5,500 people over the span of 20 years. Most of those people tracked by the Dutch team were born in 1914-1918, during the First World War.

The volunteers were surveyed on their drinking habits while they were in their sixties and seventies before researchers monitored how many of them made it to the age of 90.

According to the results published in the journal Age and Ageing, 34 percent of the women and 16 percent of the men reached that age.

However, those who drank between 5 to 10 grams of alcohol per day – the equivalent of a half-pint of beer, a small glass of wine, or a standard shot of liquor – were 40 percent more likely to reach 90 years.

And while drinking up to 15g per day slightly improved volunteers’ chances of reaching 90, any more than that led to premature death.

In his report on the findings, Dr. van den Brandt said:

“We found alcohol intake was positively associated with the probability of reaching 90 years of age in both men and women.

Wine was associated with women reaching 90 but not with men. Instead, intake of gin, brandy and whisky increased their longevity.”

Researchers remain unclear as to why the small daily doses of alcohol are so beneficial.

However, researchers also warned that older people should be aware of how alcohol could potentially interfere with prescription medications. They also noted that the study should not be seen as an endorsement of imbibing alcohol.

Dr. van den Brandt said:

“This should not be used by anyone who does not currently drink alcohol as motivation to start drinking.”

According to the Daily Mail, Lucy Holmes, a director of research and policy at Alcohol Change UK, said:

“This study shows again what all the evidence points to and what the UK’s top doctors tell us – the healthiest choice is to drink 14 units a week or less.

That’s a bottle and a half of wine, or six pints of normal strength lager, spread over three or more days. But if you don’t drink at the moment, this isn’t a reason to start.”

Former vice president Joe Biden is quickly taking a victory lap after being projected to win the South Carolina Primary:

Thank you, South Carolina! To all those who have been knocked down, counted out, and left behind — this is your campaign. Together, we will win this nomination and beat Donald Trump.

— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 1, 2020

Amid a larger than expected African American voter turnout, Biden dominated the initial vote count…

And is forecast to win the primary.

The double-digit win for Biden, along with the likelihood of collecting many or most of the 54 delegates at stake, gives his campaign a much-needed shot in the arm ahead of the Super Tuesday primaries next week.

President Trump was not slow in reacting either:

Sleepy Joe Biden’s victory in the South Carolina Democrat Primary should be the end of Mini Mike Bloomberg’s Joke of a campaign. After the worst debate performance in the history of presidential debates, Mini Mike now has Biden split up his very few voters, taking many away!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 1, 2020

Does this mean the market will rally on Monday?

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

Complacency came before the fall. All of 2019 market participants ignored the non existent earnings growth. Too strong was the now pavlovian reflex to chase easy central bank money. Too trusting in central banks to again produce a reflation scenario that would make all the troubles go away.

Everything was ignored and markets and stocks were relentless chased higher into some of the highest market valuations ever. Even the coronavirus was ignored. A dip to buy in January they said. AAPL warning? Let’s ignore it and buy AAPL to new all time highs again.

Nothing mattered until it did.

Then markets crashed last week. Perhaps not in percentage terms, but in terms of vertical velocity to the downside it was unmatched in history. The fastest 15% correction off of all time highs ever and by far.

Worse, months of buyers of stocks and markets at high valuations suddenly found themselves trapped as the bottom fell out inside of a few days:

$NYSE, the broader index dropping below the January 2018 highs and closing below the summer 2019 lows now showing an index that has gone nowhere in 2 years and the recent highs being a complete mirage.

The big message: It was not different this time. Bears were right. Full stop.

$DJIA fell all the way to the June 2019 low taking out 9 months of buying:

Don’t anybody tell me everybody sold the top. No, lots of buyers are trapped at much higher prices and are now again dependent on central banks coming to the rescue.

The very central banks that have led them into another liquidity trap. By printing, cutting rates, adding to the balance sheet at a record clip and even producing new record holdings of treasury bills the Fed has created a stock buying frenzy. In denial of its actions and the historic valuations that were created in the process the Fed caused a massive melt up in stocks and markets and now investors have paid the price as the Fed lost control:

Loss of control in print. pic.twitter.com/cQBitPTepG

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) February 28, 2020

And now everybody is in hopes that the Fed can print even more to rescue markets once again.

Sure enough on Friday Jay Powell came out and tried to “sooth” markets.

It was oh so predictable:

I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!https://t.co/HyPicKSCiS

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) February 28, 2020

And I called it the week before:

Prediction: If markets drop 10%+ before April the Fed will not end repo or its treasury bills buying program as indicated.
If anything they will increase it and cut rates.

Why? Because markets will demand it & this Fed has no backbone whatsoever & his beholden to markets.

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) February 20, 2020

And here we are, the market now pricing in a 100% probability of a rate cut by March and Powell sending the signal it will come. Indeed markets are now pricing in nearly 4 rate cuts by early 2021 and there’s chatter about an emergency rate cut coming or global coordinated central bank intervention.

They will react for certain and this reaction may well an drive aggressive counter rally in coming weeks from now extreme oversold conditions in markets.

But the bigger issue now is that central banks are very much at risk of losing final control here, having left themselves vulnerable, intervening always at the first sign of trouble, and now they have precious little ammunition to deal with a real emergency if coronavirus is turning into something much more serious.

Money printing does not start production chains or cause airlines to fly. So the risk of a global recession unfolding is a clear and present danger and then futures rallies would continue to get sold and markets may embark on a multi year bear market. That’s the risk they tried to avoid in 2019.

We can’t know how any of this plays out of course and hopes are the virus will calm down in the next month or two and then this current shock to the system can recover and pent up demand can rescue the economy and markets into the second half. It’s possible, but it may also not be possible depending on the severity. Because frankly, we are watching a historic experiment unfold:

Historic experiment:
Let’s take the longest and slowest recovery business cycle & the most indebted global economy, use cheap money to jam markets to the highest market cap to GDP valuations ever and then shut down the global supply chain and then let’s see what happens. pic.twitter.com/ubXzSeYdox

— Sven Henrich (@NorthmanTrader) February 28, 2020

I repeat: Nobody can know how this will play out. However we can let the technicals guide us, the very technicals that told us this rally was unsustainable, that it had massive issues, and that a reversion was coming.

In this week’s video I’m focusing on what just happened and why, the damage that has been inflicted, the orchestra of support we witnessed on Friday, and what we may expect going forward including potential for an aggressive counter rally, but also resistance on any moves up given the technical damage that has occurred.

*  *  *

Please be sure to watch it in HD for clarity. To get notified of future videos feel free to subscribe to our YouTube Channel. For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.

Last week we noted an in-depth report by Bloomberg on how a 61-year-old Korean ‘typhoid Mary‘ spread coronavirus throughout her doomsday religious cult after praying with at least a thousand other adherents.

“What made this case so much worse was that this person spent a considerable amount of time in a very crowded area,” said Seoul National University professor of health policy, Kim Chang-yup. “There’s growing fear and resentment among the people right now.”

As a result, over 1,900 members of the Shincheonji Church have been screened for coronavirus, of which 1,551 – or 81%, tested positive according to the BBC‘s Laura Bicker.

Put another way:

Out of a population of 1,900
1,300 were symptomatic
600 asymptomatic

420 tested positive but asymptomatic
1,131 tested positive and symptomatic

= 1,551 infections out of 1,900 = 81%

— Jay Reynolds (@jaycreynolds) February 29, 2020

Of note, because the church’s leader (who believes he’s an immortal prophet sent by Jesus Christ) preaches about the end-of-days, followers have been accused of purposefully spreading the disease – however those reports are unconfirmed and there is no evidence to suggest this is occurring.

What is known is that the church held religious gatherings in the Chinese city of Wuhan – the epicenter of the current outbreak.

In short, expect similar results – assuming reports of purposeful infection are false – at similar places of worship around the world.

Authored by Ben Hunt via EpsilonTheory.com,

I believe that a healthy society should not have only one voice.

– Li Wenliang, Wuhan physician, born October 12, 1986, died February 7, 2020.

Last night, I received a Twitter DM that included screenshots of an email that went out to staff at the UC Davis Medical Center. After checking for authenticity, I posted the screenshots in a tweet of my own.

And that’s when, as the kids would say, it blew up.

I want to highlight a couple of quotes from this email.

Since the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria for COVID-19, a test was not immediately administered. UC Davis Health does not control the testing process.

The facts here are pretty clear. Patient comes in from another hospital on Wednesday, Feb. 19 – this is one week ago – already intubated and on a ventilator, and the doctors at UC Davis – who have treated other COVID-19 cases – IMMEDIATELY suspect COVID-19.

But the CDC refuses to test for COVID-19.

Why? Because it didn’t fit their “criteria” for testing. They didn’t know for sure that the patient was in mainland China within the past 14 days, and they didn’t know for sure that the patient was in close contact with another confirmed case, so BY DEFINITION this patient can’t possibly have COVID-19. No test for you!

This is “Don’t Test, Don’t Tell” and it is the single most incompetent, corrupt public health policy of my lifetime.

And it’s happening all over the country.

Here, take a look at yesterday’s press conference from Nassau County, Long Island.

WATCH: Nassau County Executive Curran and Health Commissioner Eisenstein provide updates and guidance on #coronavirus.https://t.co/zDcPSePWMM

— Laura Curran (@NassauExecutive) February 26, 2020

Excruciating. They spend the first five minutes of the presser congratulating each other. Then the update: 83 people are in self-quarantine at home, where they are supposed to “check their temperature” daily. Don’t have a thermometer? Not to worry! The Nassau County Health Commission will provide one for you!

Who are the 83 in self-quarantine? Why, they’re everyone that Homeland Security says should be in self-quarantine, based on “current guidelines” of someone who was in mainland China within the past 14 days.

Has it been 15 days since your mainland China visit?

Have you been to Northern Italy in past 14 days?

Have you been to Iran in past 14 days?

Have you been to South Korea in past 14 days?

Well, no self-quarantine for you! You’re fine!

And here’s the kicker. Not only is there ZERO tracking or monitoring of anyone who has been swimming in the coronavirus stew of South Korea, Northern Italy and Iran, but let’s say that you have in fact been to one of those areas recently and now you’re feeling sick. You go to the doctor and you tell her the whole story. Both of you suspect it might be COVID-19. You’re trying to do the right thing here. You call the county health authority. You call the state health authority. You call the CDC. And then you learn the awful truth of Don’t Test, Don’t Tell.

It’s not that testing is not available…It’s that testing is not ALLOWED.

I’m not panicked. I am perfectly calm.

But I am really, really pissed off.

Because here’s the other quote from the UC Davis email that I’d like you to pay close attention to:

When the patient arrived [Wednesday], the patient had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition. … On Sunday, the CDC ordered COVID-19 testing of the patient and the patient was put on airborne precautions and strict contact precautions.

Translation: for four days, every healthcare professional treating this patient at UC Davis was exposed to airborne transmission of COVID-19. And so was every healthcare professional at the hospital before UC Davis. Because the CDC refused to test this patient for COVID-19 in a timely manner, the doctors and nurses and technicians caring for this patient were put at risk.

Sure enough:

We are asking a small number of employees to stay home and monitor their temperature.

This is the part of the story that we must yell at the top of our lungs.

Don’t Test, Don’t Tell is not just hiding the true extent of COVID-19 cases in the United States.

Don’t Test, Don’t Tell is not just perpetuating the politically corrupt “Yay, Containment!” narrative of this White House.

Don’t Test, Don’t Tell is endangering the lives of our doctors and nurses.

Just like in China.

Just like in Wuhan.

A city falls when its healthcare system is overwhelmed. A city falls when its national government fails to prepare and support its doctors and nurses. A city falls when its government is more concerned with maintaining some bullshit narrative of “Yay, Calm and Competent Control!” than in doing what is politically embarrassing but socially necessary.

That’s EXACTLY what happened in Wuhan. More than 30% of doctors and nurses in Wuhan themselves fell victim to COVID-19, so that the healthcare system stopped being a source of healing, but became a source of infection. At which point the Chinese government effectively abandoned the city, shut it off from the rest of the country, placed more than 9 million people under house arrest, and allowed the disease to essentially burn itself out.

And so Wuhan fell.

The disaster that befell the citizens of Wuhan and so many other cities throughout China is not primarily a virus. The disaster is having a political regime that cares more about maintaining a self-serving narrative of control than it cares about saving the lives of its citizens.

We must prevent that from happening here. From happening anywhere. Yes, containment has failed. But that does NOT mean the war is lost. We can absolutely do better – SO MUCH BETTER – for our citizens than China did for theirs.

The CDC’s Don’t Test, Don’t Tell policy came crashing down last night. So did Trump’s “buh, buh the flu” and “Yay, Containment!” narratives.

Now let’s get to work preparing for the fight to come.

Not in panic. Not in fear. But with resolve, sacrifice and righteous anger for those who would use us instrumentally for their own political ends.

Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.

Washington momentarily put aside the fact that it’s essentially at war with Iran and in a very rare moment actually offered to “help” Iran combat the rapidly spreading and deadly coronavirus according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday.

“We have made offers to the Islamic Republic of Iran to help, and we’ve made it clear to others around the world and in the region that assistance, humanitarian assistance to push back against the coronavirus in Iran is something the United States of America fully supports,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo clarified after the hearing to reporters that the offer of support was made “to the Iranian people” and “formally conveyed to Iran through the government of Switzerland,” The Hill reported.

Despite Iran’s official death toll now standing at multiple dozens, rising to 43 as of Saturday morning, with a total number of infected at 593 (though the true numbers of infected are believed to be in the thousands or possibly tens of thousands), the Islamic Republic’s leaders promptly mocked Pompeo’s claim to have extended a hand of “support”. 

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousav on Friday slammed America’s offer as “ridiculous,” according to the Mehr news agency.

“The claim to help Iran in dealing with corona from a country who with their economic terrorism has created widespread pressure for the people of Iran and even closed the paths for buying medicine and medical equipment, is a ridiculous claim and a political-psychological game,” Mousavi said.

Meanwhile, a number of reports have analyzed the impact of US sanctions on Iran’s coronavirus crisis – the hardest hit country outside of China – and concluded the US administration’s punitive attempt to devastate the Iranian economy is a contributing factor to Covid-19’s rapid spread there. The National Interest reported that the White House has responded to this criticism by opening up humanitarian avenues. 

“The Trump administration is partially reversing course on economic sanctions that have slowed down Iran from importing coronavirus test kits as the country faces down the most deadly COVID-19 outbreak outside of East Asia,” according to the report.

Iranian leaders have blamed Washington for the worsening crisis, given the limited ability to import virus testing kits and equipment and medicines. 

“The U.S. Treasury announced on Thursday morning that it was lifting some terrorism-related sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, which re-opens a channel for humanitarian trade that had been closed since September 2019,” The National Interest said further.

The same long lines that we’ve seen in China, Japan, South Korea, and across the world as people panic buy food and health supplies have started in the US.

On Saturday, the US Surgeon General urged people to “stop buying masks,” saying on Twitter that they’re not effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.

Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!

They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!
https://t.co/UxZRwxxKL9

— U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) February 29, 2020

Despite the CDC telling everyone to calm down, alleged video of long lines pouring out of a Costco store in Brooklyn, New York, surfaced on YouTube Saturday afternoon. 

This comes days after we reported Hawaiians raced to Sam’s Club and Costco to panic buy food and health supplies as virus fears surge.

And as we noted earlier today: “The great panic of 2020 is underway” as Americans are now stocking up on supplies as the next pandemic could be imminent.

The question we all should be asking: Why was the first medical research lab, located in Shanghai, to sequence the whole genome of Covid-19 and publicly share the data shut down? 

The Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center & School of Public Health at Fudan University was the first lab in the world to sequence the whole genome of the virus on Jan 11. Then, the Shanghai Health Commission, one day later, on Jan 12, shuttered the lab for “rectification.” 

“The center was not given any specific reasons why the laboratory was closed for rectification. [We have submitted] four reports [asking for permission] to reopen, but we have not received any replies,” a source from the lab told the South China Morning Post (SCMP). 

The source said it wasn’t clear if the closure of the Level 3 biosafety facility was a direct result of the lab publishing virus sequence data on virological.org, an open-access virus discussion forum, and GenBank, an open-access data repository. 

The release of the genome data on the public domain allowed researchers to develop a new test kit to diagnose the virus. By Feb 3, the lab’s Professor Zhang Yongzhen, who was responsible for the sequencing, found his data published in Nature. 

“It was not about any individual’s achievements. It’s about having biological test kits ready in the face of a previously unknown respiratory disease, especially when a large part of the population [was] moving [across the country] during the Lunar New Year holidays,” said the source. 

The source warned that the closure of the lab slowed down scientists and their research when they should have been developing new tools and vaccines to manage the virus outbreak, but for some reason, and it’s still unknown, the government immediately closed the lab after the genome sequence was published in the public domain. 

“There have been applications from research institutes and universities to try drugs and compare the effects of different treatment and the development of vaccines, but [all these will have] to be turned down. Closing down the laboratory also affects the studying of the virus,” the source added.

China’s lack of transparency since the outbreak began late last year is a significant concern. The likely reason behind the lab’s closure early last month was pressure by the Chinese government on Shanghai Health Commission to prevent the spread of scientific data to the international community that would likely debunk the official narrative that the virus came from a food market in Wuhan, China. But as we noted last week, it’s too late, and the Global Times had to admit that a “New Chinese study indicates novel coronavirus did not originate in the Huanan seafood market.”

Even China has had to question its official narrative; the NY Post published an article which sounds very familiar to ours: “Don’t buy China’s story: The coronavirus may have leaked from a lab” in which the author writes “the evidence points to SARS-CoV-2 research being carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

As to why China pressured Shanghai to close the lab that first sequenced the virus and published it on open-access sites for the world’s scientific community to observe is that it attempted to limit information about the virus so its official narrative wouldn’t be debunked; oops too late. 

Last week, Guggenheim’s Global CIO Scott Minerd exclaimed that “the cognitive dissonance in the market is stunning,” as he reflected on the ever-rising stock prices (and collapsing credit spreads) he was seeing in the face of growing global fears of the virus’ spread.

And as the market began to waken from its dissonant slumber, he warned:

“This is not a buy-the-dip market. It is a don’t-catch-a-falling-knife market. “

As he detailed to CNBC the threat the coronavirus poses to corporate earnings and the U.S. economy if the pandemic spreads.

And now, after an unprecedented collapse in stock prices and Treasury yields, Minerd details his portfolio positioning with coronavirus on the brink of pandemic.

The impact of the coronavirus has made for a crazy couple of weeks in the financial markets. Now spreading beyond Italy into other parts of Europe, it is on the brink of a pandemic and investors, fearing a sharp slowdown in global growth, have reacted by taking out support for yields for the long bond and the 10-year Treasury note. Bonds are comfortably below 2 percent and the 10-year Treasury yield is hovering around 1.3 percent. Unlikely as it may seem, technical analysis now indicates a target yield on the 30-year bond at 1 percent and the 10-year note at 0.25 percent. Stocks are nearing correction territory, with more downside likely.

At the same time that long Treasury yields are making new historic lows, credit spreads, while widening, remain relatively tight. This does not make any sense given the fundamental backdrop which indicate that defaults will rise significantly, particularly in energy, airlines, retailing, and hospitality. Nevertheless, central bank liquidity continues to drive flows into bonds at a record pace. These flows are keeping spreads tight and, until there is an interruption of the inflows, credit spreads will be contained.

We are trying to buy as many high-quality longer-duration assets as possible at reasonable yields to help lengthen duration in the face of potentially lower rates, but 3 percent is becoming a difficult yield to reach. We are selectively adding to BB credits which we think are “money good” to certain accounts to enhance yield.

All in all, these are “interesting times” as the old Chinese curse goes. Going into February, my overriding concern was that the Federal Reserve, by purchasing $60 billion in Treasury bills per month, was lifting asset values across the board in the fourth quarter and into the first. This form of quantitative easing was causing what I called the everything bubble, because virtually every sector was up over the past year.

Now apparently the everything bubble for risk assets is in danger of deflating. The coronavirus is showing us the unpredictable path that an exogenous force can play in interrupting an economy that is already exhibiting many late-cycle symptoms. And it is far from over. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been firm in its warnings, as Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC urged, “We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.”

We have reached the tipping point. Either the epidemic will be quickly contained or the world will soon slip into pandemic. I’m not an epidemiologist so I will leave the semantics to the medical experts, but of this I am certain: From a U.S. perspective if our neighbors are infected, it will be an epidemic. If infections begin rapid transmission in the U.S., we will call this a pandemic.

For the moment we have found support in the S&P 500 around 3,000 and the decline in the 10-year Treasury yield has stopped out at around 1.25 percent. For the time being, I would expect retracing in both markets as stocks and bonds stabilize or even rise in price.

In the coming days, market prices will be the tell as to how the disease progresses. For the moment, panic is high. To be clear, I am not saying the worst is over; but, rather, it is time to take a break and assess the next moves.

Eventually, we may have an opportunity to add more risk assets to our client portfolios as economic growth slows around the world and corporate borrowers default. Certainly, the chances of recession are rising rapidly for which we are well positioned. As Solomon said, “The wise man sees danger ahead and prepares himself.” There is certainly possible danger ahead and we will be looking for its cousin “opportunity” if this turns into a crisis. It may already be one.