Peter Navarro Explodes At Faucci In Heated Showdown Over Hydroxychloroquine
White House economic adviser got into a massive argument with the coronavirus task force’s Anthony Fauci over the doctor’s ongoing resistance to the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, despite reports of the drug’s widespread efficacy.
Numerous government officials were at the table, including Fauci, coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx, Jared Kushner, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, and Commissioner of Food and Drugs Stephen Hahn.
Behind them sat staff, including Peter Navarro, tapped by Trump to compel private companies to meet the government’s coronavirus needs under the Defense Production Act.
According to the report, towards the end of the meeting Hahn began a discussion of the commonly used malaria drug hydroxychloroquine – which was recently rated the ‘most effective therapy‘ for coronavirus according to a global survey of more than 6,000 doctors.
After Hahn gave an update on various trials and real-world use of the drug, Navarro got up and dropped a stack of folders on the table to pass around.
According to Axios‘s source, “the first words out of his [Navarro’s] mouth are that the studies that he’s seen, I believe they’re mostly overseas, show ‘clear therapeutic efficacy,’” adding “Those are the exact words out of his mouth.
Fauci – who’s not got his own Twitter hashtag, #FireFauci – began pushing back against Navarro, repeating his oft-repeated contention that ‘there’s only anecdotal evidence’ that the drug works against COVID-19.
Navarro exploded – after Fauci’s mention of anecdotal evidence “just set Peter off.” The economic adviser shot back “That’s the science, not anecdote,” while pointing to the stack of folders on the desk, which included the results of studies from around the world showing its efficacy.
Here’s what unfolded next, via Axios:
Navarro started raising his voice, and at one point accused Fauci of objecting to Trump’s travel restrictions, saying, “You were the one who early on objected to the travel restrictions with China,” saying that travel restrictions don’t work. (Navarro was one of the earliest to push the China travel ban.)
Fauci looked confused, according to a source in the room. After Trump imposed the travel restrictions, Fauci has publicly praised the president’s restriction on travel from China.
Pence was trying to moderate the heated discussion. “It was pretty clear that everyone was just trying to get Peter to sit down and stop being so confrontational,” said one of the sources.
Eventually, Kushner turned to Navarro and said, “Peter, take yes for an answer,” because most everyone agreed, by that time, it was important to surge the supply of the drug to hot zones.
The principals agreed that the administration’s public stance should be that the decision to use the drug is between doctors and patients.
Trump ended up announcing at his press conference that he had 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine in the Strategic National Stockpile.
According to a source familiar with the coronavirus task force, “There has never been a confrontation in the task force meetings like the one yesterday,” adding “People speak up and there’s robust debate, but there’s never been a confrontation. Yesterday was the first confrontation.”
Meanwhile, 37% of 6,227 doctors across 30 countries felt the drug was the “most effective therapy” out of 15 options in treating coronavirus, according to a poll reported by the Washington Times.
The drug has been prescribed in 72% of cases in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in Mexico, 28% in France, and 23% in the USA. Overall, 19% of physicians have prescribed the drug for high-risk patients, and 8% for low-risk patients.
More from the Sermo poll (via the Washington Times)
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Sermo CEO Peter Kirk called the polling results a “treasure trove of global insights for policy makers.”
“Physicians should have more of a voice in how we deal with this pandemic and be able to quickly share information with one another and the world,” he said. “With censorship of the media and the medical community in some countries, along with biased and poorly designed studies, solutions to the pandemic are being delayed.”
The survey also found that 63% of U.S. physicians believe restrictions should be lifted in six weeks or more, and that the epidemic’s peak is at least 3-4 weeks away.
The survey also found that 83% of global physicians anticipate a second global outbreak, including 90% of U.S. doctors but only 50% of physicians in China.
On average, U.S. coronavirus testing takes 4-5 days, while 10% of cases take longer than seven days. In China, 73% of doctors reported getting rest results back in 24 hours.
In cases of ventilator shortages, all countries but China said the top criteria should be patients with the best chance of recovery (47%), followed by patients with the highest risk of death (21%), and then first responders (15%).
Wall Street’s Formerly Biggest Bear Goes All-In Ahead Of The Coming Runaway Inflation
Last week we reported that Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson, who for most of 2018 and 2019 had dominated the league tables as the biggest bear among Wall Street’s big banks (this of course excludes such outlier bears as SocGen’s Albert Edwards who has for years been warning about what is coming), turned bullish and last Monday said that he is a “buyer of dips” since “2400-2600 on the S&P 500 will prove to be very good entry points for those with a time horizon of 6-12 months.”
Over the weekend, Wilson was also the author of Morgan Stanley’s influential Sunday Start weekly which sets the narrative not only for the key bank themes over the rest of the week, but also is a signpost for Morgan Stanley’s clients, and perhaps not surprisingly, Wilson used the podium to expand why on such short notice, he has U-turned from Wall Street’s de facto uber bear to one of the biggest, if not most vocal, bulls.
In a nutshell, what follows is his explanation why “Bear Markets END with Recessions“, which in theory is correct, but one wonders what happens if instead of a recession we are looking at a depression. And if so, the real question is when will the bear market end, because as a reminder the recession of 1929, which of course was much more than just a recession, lasted 43 months. If we are indeed entering another D-word phase, are we looking at another 43 months before the market stabilizes?
In any case, here is Wilson with a dose of – rather rare these days – bullishness, and not only that, but a rather somber assessment of what is really coming down the line – runaway inflation and a sharply lower dollar:
In the past month, we’ve experienced a full bear market, down 20%, and a full bull market, up 20%. Of course, this extreme volatility follows a period of extreme calm that saw some of the lowest volatility readings in history. As the famed economist Hyman Minsky observed, a market collapse can be brought on by the speculative activity that defines an unsustainable bullish period – the Minsky Moment. If you accept that 4Q19 resembled a speculative frenzy driven more by liquidity than fundamentals, the Minsky Moment diagnosis is not only compelling but hard to refute.
In my Sunday Start last month (Unfinished Business), I suggested the US economy was finally headed toward a recession but, once over, it could usher in the second leg of the secular bull market. Since then, whatever debate remained on the recession has been conclusively resolved, with the discussion quickly shifting to who can come up with the most negative forecasts.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that crises lead to bailouts, and this time is no different. Since this is a public health crisis, the response has been extreme. There are literally no governors on the amount of monetary or fiscal stimulus that will be used in this fight. As evidence, our economists now estimate a US fiscal deficit of 18% this year, a level last seen during World War II. While the struggle against Covid-19 is a war, the amount of money being thrown at this enemy may be excessive, given that this conflict will be shorter and the outcome more certain – we will win. The destruction of productive assets will undoubtedly be much less severe than in WWII, leaving potential GDP intact once the recession is over even though the recovery path is uncertain.
Recessions require a trigger, and the conditions must be in place for that trigger to work. Every expansion leads to excessive credit creation, and this time it took place in corporate credit and the shadow banks, among other areas. A recession always creates the most pain where credit and leverage had reached excess. However, given the extreme response from the Fed and Congress, we envision less pain than normal for these bad actors. This is one reason why we have been getting more bullish in the past few weeks, though the economic and earnings data are likely to remain bad and even get worse.
My longer-term secular bull market view has always assumed a cyclical bear market in the middle punctuated by a recession – like today. I’ve argued further that the next leg of the secular bull would see the long-awaited appearance of inflation, which would require a transition from monetary to fiscal policy dominance. Cue the steepest recession since the 1940s accompanied by a health crisis.
The old adage of “never let a good crisis go to waste” could not be more apropos today. Not only are we likely to get the largest peacetime fiscal deficit in history, but the stimulus targets the parts of the economy with a higher propensity to spend. The first experiment with QE after the financial crisis was accompanied by fiscal austerity and bank regulation – a deflationary combination. This time, we have a potentially much more inflationary combination of an unprecedented targeted fiscal stimulus and possible deregulation of the banks to get the cash into the hands of lower income individuals and small businesses that are inclined to spend it. Such a dramatic shift in US fiscal and monetary policy relative to other regions should lead to a materially weaker dollar, which is ultimately the easiest path to reflation not only for the US, but also the world.
Finally, let’s not forget some of the other inflationary developments of the past five years – populism, which has driven minimum wage legislation, and nationalism, which has led to tariffs and a trend toward de-globalization. Now a pandemic will likely further disrupt and permanently add costs to global supply chains.
To summarize, with the forced liquidation of assets in the past month largely behind us, unprecedented and unbridled monetary and fiscal intervention led by the US, and the most attractive valuation we have seen since 2011, we stick to our recent view that the worst is behind us for this cyclical bear market that began two years ago, not last month.
Therefore, current levels in equity and credit markets should prove to be good entry points on a 6-12-month horizon. Bear markets end with recessions, they don’t begin with them, making the risk/reward more attractive today than it’s been in years; with the twist that the next leg of the bull market could look much different than the last and the unthinkable – inflation – begins to appear.
“This is one of the worst cover-ups in human history, and now the world is facing a global pandemic,”said Rep. Michael T. McCaul, the ranking Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, before the US intelligence community concluded, in a classified report to the White House, that China has concealed the origin and extent of the catastrophic global coronavirus outbreak.
The Chinese Communist Party’s “failure has unleashed a global contagion killing thousands”,wrote Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, president of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, on April 1. “As we survey the damage done to lives around the world, we must ask who is responsible?”
“… there is one government that has primary responsibility for what it has done and what it has failed to do, and that is the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] regime in Beijing. Let me be clear — it is the CCP that has been responsible, not the people of China… Lies and propaganda have put millions of lives around the world in danger… In recent years, we have seen an intense crackdown on freedom of expression in China. Lawyers, bloggers, dissidents and civil society activists have been rounded up and have disappeared.”
One more person has just disappeared: Ai Fen, a Chinese physician who was head of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, had worked with the late Dr. Li Wenliang. Ai, who claimed that her bosses silenced her early warnings about coronavirus, appears to have vanished. Her whereabouts, according to 60 Minutes Australia, are unknown. The journalists who saw what happened inside Wuhan have also disappeared. Caixin Global reported that the laboratories which sequenced the coronavirus in December were ordered by Chinese officials to hand over or destroy the samples and not release their findings.
“If I had known what was to happen, I would not have cared about the reprimand, I would have fucking talked about it to whoever, where ever I could”, Ai Fen said in an interview in March. Those were her last recorded words.
There is no record at all, however, about how this pandemic began.Wet market? A cave full of bats? Pangolins? Or a bio-weapons laboratory? No foreign doctors, journalists, analysts or international observers are present in Wuhan. Why, if the virus came out of a wet market or a cave, did China suppress inquiries to such an extent? Why, in December, did Beijing order Chinese scientists to destroy proof about the virus? Why did Chinese officials claim that US soldiers brought the virus to Wuhan? Why should it be scandalous that a US President calls a virus that began in China a “Chinese virus“?
Who announced on January 11 that Wuhan’s wet market was the origin of this epidemic? The Chinese regime. It was later discovered that the first known case of coronavirus traced back to November 17, 2019.
The same Chinese regime later claimed that this coronavirus “may not have originated in China”. What respected scientist or institution can now trust anything that comes out of China?
Many leading scientists have dismissed the claim that the Covid-19 virus was an engineered pathogen. This conclusion was seemingly based on the fact that Wuhan has two major virus research labs: the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is apparently less than a mile from the market, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory, handling the world’s most deadly pathogens, located just seven miles from the market. The story was immediately and emphatically trashed as a “conspiracy theory“.
Those scientists claim that the virus likely originated among wildlife before spreading to humans, possibly through a food market in Wuhan. They say that, through genetic sequencing, they have identified the culprit for Covid-19 as a bat coronavirus. End of story? Science, thankfully, begins by asking questions and then seeking answers.
Bats were not, it seems, sold at Wuhan’s wet market. The Lancetnoted in a January study that the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan had no connection to the market. The Lancet‘s paper, written by Chinese researchers from several institutions, detailed that 13 of the 41 first cases had no link to the market. “That’s a big number, 13, with no link,” commented Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Georgetown University. So how did the epidemic start?
“Now it seems clear that [the] seafood market is not the only origin of the virus, but to be honest we still do not know where the virus came from now”,notes Bin Cao, pulmonary specialist at Capital Medical University, and the corresponding author of the Lancet article.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that China’s Communist Party is withholding information about the coronavirus.
If we do not know, it is necessary be open to all possibilities.
“Less than 300 yards from the seafood market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention” wrote David Ignatius of the Washington Post.
“Researchers from that facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses from around China, for study to prevent future illness. Did one of those samples leak, or was hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could spread?“.
“Collecting viruses” presumably does not exclude the possibility of a “leaked virus”. Worse, if China is not able to protect its laboratories, it needs to be held accountable and made to pay for the devastating global damage.
“Experts know the new coronavirus is not a bioweapon. They disagree on whether it could have leaked from a research lab”,statedThe Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Professor Richard Ebright of Rutgers University’s Waksman Institute of Microbiology, and a major biosecurity expert, agreed with the Nature Medicine authors’ argument that the coronavirus was not manipulated by humans. But Ebright does think it possible that the Covid-19 started as an accidental leak from a laboratory, such as one of the two in Wuhan, which are known to have been studying bat viruses:
“Virus collection or animal infection with a virus having the transmission characteristics of the outbreak virus would pose substantial risk of infection of a lab worker, and from the lab worker, the public.”
Ebright has also claimed that bat coronaviruses are studied in Wuhan at Biosafety Level 2, “which provides only minimal protection” compared with the top BSL-4.
“We don’t know what happened, but there are a lot of reasons to believe that this indeed was a release of some sort”, China expert Gordon Chang said to Die Weltwoche.
“No one has been able to study it. How can you say it’s not a release from a lab if you can’t go to the lab? Indeed, we have seen Beijing do its best to prevent virologists and epidemiologists from actually going to Wuhan. The World Health Organization team went to Wuhan for like half a day with only part of the team.”
That is another major problem. The potential major investigator of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic’s origin, the World Health Organization (WHO), is now accused of being “China’s coronavirus’ accomplice“. As late as January 14, the WHO quoted Chinese health officials claiming there had been no human transmissions of the coronavirus within the country yet.
China poses a biosecurity risks for the entire planet. One year before the first coronavirus case was identified in Wuhan, US Customs and Border Protection agents at Detroit Metro Airport stopped a Chinese biologist with three vials labeled “Antibodies” in his luggage. According to an unclassified FBI tactical intelligence report obtained by Yahoo News:
“Inspection of the writing on the vials and the stated recipient led inspection personnel to believe the materials contained within the vials may be viable Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) materials.”
Why is China trafficking in dangerous viruses in the first place?
According to Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations:
“A safety breach at a Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention lab is believed to have caused four suspected SARS cases, including one death, in Beijing in 2004. A similar accident caused 65 lab workers of Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute to be infected with brucellosis in December 2019. In January 2020, a renowned Chinese scientist, Li Ning, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for selling experimental animals to local markets”.
In February, Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, from Guangzhou’s South China University of Technology, wrote in a research paper:
“In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Safety level [sic] may need to be reinforced in high risk biohazardous laboratories”.
Xiao later told the Wall Street Journal that he had withdrawn the paper because it “was not supported by direct proofs”.
Chinese laboratory mistakes have happened before. By 2010, researchers published as fact: “The most famous case of a released laboratory strain is the re-emergent H1N1 influenza-A virus which was first observed in China in May of 1977 and in Russia shortly thereafter”. The virus may have escaped from a lab attempting to prepare a vaccine in response to the U.S. swine flu pandemic alert.
In 1999 the most senior defector in the US from the Soviet biological warfare program, Ken Alibek, revealed that Soviet officials concluded that China had suffered a serious accident at one of its secret biological plants, causing two major epidemics of fever that had swept China in the late 1980s. “Our analysts”, Alibek stated in his book, Biohazard, “concluded that they were caused by an accident in a lab where Chinese scientists were weaponizing viral diseases”.
In 2004, the World Health Organization disclosed that the latest outbreak of “severe acute respiratory syndrome” (SARS) in China involved two researchers who were working with the virus in a Beijing research lab. The WHO denounced Chinese breaches of safety procedures, and director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Li Liming, resigned. Science magazine also stated that “for the third time in less than a year, an outbreak of SARS seems to have originated from a failure in laboratory containment”.
Moreover, three years ago, when China opened the laboratory in Wuhan, Tim Trevan, a Maryland biosafety specialist, told Nature that he worried about the safety of the building because “structures where everyone feels free to speak up and openness of information are important.” Free speech and open information: exactly what Chinese regime fought against in December and January.
A Chinese video about a key researcher in Wuhan, Tian Junhua, which was released a few weeks before the outbreak in Wuhan, shows Chinese researchers handling bats that contained viruses. In the video (produced by China Science Communication, run by the China Association for Science and Technology), Tian says:
“I am not a doctor, but I work to cure and save people… I am not a soldier, but I work to safeguard an invisible national defense line”.
“I can feel the fear: the fear of infections and the fear of getting lost. Because of the fear, I take every step extremely cautiously. The more scared I feel, the more care I take in executing every detail. Because the process of you finding the viruses is also when you can be exposed to them the easiest. I do hope these virus samples will only be preserved for scientific research and will never be used in real life”.
For a month, the Chinese Communist Party, instead of fighting the contagion, did everything possible to censor all information about the Covid-19 outbreak. After President Xi Jinping declared “a people’s war” on the epidemic on January 20, Chinese security services pursued 5,111 cases of “fabricating and deliberately disseminating false and harmful information”. The Chinese Human Rights Defenders documented several types of punishment, including detention, disappearance, fines, interrogations, forced confessions and “educational reprimand”.
After that, China lied about the real number of deaths. There are photographs of long lines of stacked urns greeting family members of the dead at funeral homes in Wuhan. Outside one funeral home, trucks shipped in 2,500 urns. According to Chinese official figures, 2,548 people in Wuhan have died of the Covid-19. According to an analysis by Radio Free Asia, seven funeral homes in Wuhan were each handing out 500 funeral urns containing remains for 12 days, from March 23 to the traditional tomb-sweeping festival of April 5, a time that would indicate up to 42,000 urns, or ten times higher than the official figure.
In February, it was reported that Wuhan crematoriums were working around the clock to cope with the massive influx of infected bodies. Wuhan’s officials are apparently pushing relatives of the victims to bury the dead “quickly and quietly“.
“Natural virus” does not exclude its fallout from a laboratory where pathogens are collected and studied. The Nature Medicine authors “leave us where we were before: with a basis to rule out [a coronavirus from] a lab construct, but no basis to rule out a lab accident”, Professor Ebright commented.
“Debate may rage over which center it is, but at this point it seems undeniable that a center has been directly involved with research on viruses, although not necessarily on the creation of a virus” wrote Father Renzo Milanese, a longtime Catholic missionary in Hong Kong.
“In other words, the virus passed from a research center in Wuhan early on. More importantly there is also no question that the authorities were aware of the dangerousness of the virus, that they did not inform anyone and that they tried to keep the facts hidden”.
US Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a resolution calling for an international investigation into China’s handling of the spread of the virus. According to Hawley:
“The Chinese Communist Party was aware of the reality of the virus as early as December but ordered laboratories to destroy samples and forced doctors to keep silent. It is time for an international investigation into the role their cover-up played in the spread of this devastating pandemic”.
Admitting a fault, as the Japanese did after the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011, might be one way for a country to be accepted again by the international community. Censoring, denying and covering up, as China is doing, will not.
“China claims that the deadly virus did not escape from its biolab,” said a China specialist with the Population Research Institute, Steven W. Mosher.
“Fine. Prove it by releasing the research records of the Wuhan lab”.
“They’ve Left Me High And Dry”: Here Is The Real Reason Companies Have Drawn Down A Record $293 Billion In Revolvers
One week ago, we reported that starting exactly one month ago on March 5, an unprecedented wave of corporate revolver draws was unleashed, resulting in what JPMorgan calculated was a record $208BN in revolving credit facilities being fully drawn (for the full list of companies see here). A few days later, a report from Goldman Sachs observed that, contrary to JPM’s data of exponentially rising revolver draws, “the pace of revolver draws has slowed nearly 50% so far this week relative to last week, with only $40bn over the last 5 business days, relative to an average trailing 5 business days run rate last week of $75bn.”
In retrospect, there may be reason to be skeptical about Goldman’s data because in JPM’s latest weekly revolver update, the bank’s tracker of companies that have tapped banks for funding rose to $293 billion to date (remarkably, $125 bil or 43% of total borrowings, are by junk-rated firms) an increase of over $80 billion in just one week, although just like Goldman, JPM notes that “while growth has continued, the pace seems to have slowed in the past three days, both in terms of amounts borrowed and number of borrowers (see Figure 1).”
In total, the nearly $300BN in borrowings represent 77% of their credit facilities, but as JPM notes, “some firms with asset-backed facilities may not have enough borrowing base to borrow the full committed amount.” Another observation: we are still seeing large draws but fewer mega-sized draws, which makes sense as by now most mega companies have already drawn down on their revolver.
That said, JPM cautions that the actual amount of borrowing is likely significantly greater than $293 bil, as it only reflects publicly disclosed amounts, mostly from larger companies, and likely excludes many middle market firms and privately owned companies.
Some more details on the ongoing drawdown flurry:
$143 bil (49%) of announced borrowings are by investment grade firms, of which $35 bil (12%) are BBB- rated, $125 bil (43%) are by noninvestment grade firms, and $25 bil (9%) did not have available ratings.
The $293 bil total excludes $48 bil of ongoing deals, rumored loans, and new facilities that are not clear if drawn for Airbus, AT&T, Daimler, Fiat Chrysler, Honeywell, Mondelez, and Simon Property Group. If these facilities are finalized and/or fully drawn, the known total would be $340 bil.
In aggregate, the borrowings represent 77% of their credit facilities, but note that some firms with asset-backed facilities may not have enough borrowing base to borrow the full committed amount.
So why the continued rush to fully drawdown available facilities? The trivial, politically correct explanation is simply that the Commercial Paper market, where companies have traditionally gone to meet short-term funding needs, remains broken, and even though the Fed has already announced the launch of a Commercial Paper and Money Market backstop facilities, the Commercial Paper 90 Day AA non-fin spread to 3M OIS remains at levels well beyond the wides reached during the financial crisis.
In short, the Fed has much more work to normalize the CP market.
But rational as it may be, that’s not the reason for the panicked scramble to drain nearly $300BN in liquidity from the banks. Instead, the real reason is also the one that may well result from this drawdown panic as the banks themseleves suddenly find without liquidity and are forced to put themselves in quarantine from future liquidity demands: companies are increasingly worried their banks may shut them down and reneg on revolver contracts, refusing to give them access to facilities they have opened… or worse, banks may shut down period.
For a very vivid example of just that look no further than online lender Kabbage (backed, predictably, by the god of all catastrophic money-losing startups, Japan’s SoftBank whose implosion will be this bubble’s Enron and Lehman moment combined) which last week unexpectedly and without warning cut off credit to its small-business clients in the past week.
The borrowers, who range from software consultants to heavy-equipment contractors, told Bloomberg that Kabbage didn’t give them any notice, and that they learned their credit lines had been suspended only upon logging into their accounts. Some said they were counting on the money to get through the tough times ahead.
“This is very bad business ethics,” said Joydeep Paul, who runs Medserv Healthcare Solutions LLC, an emergency-medical training company in Princeton, New Jersey. He says his line of credit was cut from $22,000 to $0. “You just turn it off without saying a word — not an email, not a phone call, nothing.”
The irony is that just like countless “genius” investors who rode the biggest fake bull market in history – all on the bank of trillions and trillions in central bank backstops as the latest flurry of Fed actions has confirmed – online lenders spent the past decade touting themselves as the opposite of banks; however as soon as a real downturn hit and the gates came down. As Bloomberg reports, as the coronavirus pandemic ravages cities across the U.S., these nonbank lenders turned to a playbook that banks used during the last financial crisis more than a decade ago: reducing access to credit when the economy is contracting. Other lenders, including On Deck Capital Inc. and Fundbox Inc., have also tightened their underwriting standards or limited lines of credit.
“They’ve left me high and dry when I needed them the most,” Rob Jacques, co-founder of theCodery, a software consulting company in Petaluma, California told Bloomberg. He said he was particularly galled to be cut off without notice because until recently – when times were good – Kabbage called him every day asking him to borrow more money.
Oops.
Atlanta-based Kabbage, which got its start on Shark Tank, said it has loaned more than $9 billion to thousands of small businesses since it was founded in 2009. Ironically, the company now needs to lend money to itself most of all, having furloughed hundreds of its workers this week as it contends with a slowdown in spending at small businesses, which have suffered as consumers nationwide have been ordered to stay inside to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
But wait, the idiocy get better: Kabbage – having failed at its primary mission of providing funding in times of need instead of cutting lines of credit – is now pivoting to becoming a middleman that will connect people with loans from the Small Business Administration. It has also started a website to help small businesses sell gift certificates to consumers.
One can only imagine just how the company will screw that up.
“Like many other fintechs, we have temporarily adjusted our lines of credit and are focused on supporting the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program,” Paul Bernardini, a spokesman for Kabbage, said in a statement. By “adjusting” he meant “cut off.”
“Just as manufacturers have retooled their processes to build ventilators and masks, we’re doing the same to reallocate our resources to respond to the national emergency and provide financial products that small businesses need most.”
Rob Frohwein, Kabbage’s chief executive officer, was just a bit more honest in how he defined the company’s “pivot” in an email to employees on Friday, when he said the company would temporarily stop making loans: “As of last night, all lending has been turned off,” Frohwein wrote.
Hey Rob, while you are pivoting, here is an idea for Kabbage’s new motto: “we will give you money when you don’t need it, and cut you off when you need it most.” Catchy, right?
And then there is the old standby: Kantbage.
But wait, it gets better, because the company that gave the world the unbelievable pile of shit known as WeWork is also involved in… Kabbage. That’s right, in 2017 this pathetic excuse for a lender raised $250 million from SoftBank.
And the punchline: other SoftBank Vision Fund portfolio companies – including Indian startup Oyo Hotel, co-working giant WeWork and real estate brokerage Compass – have axed staff in recent weeks.
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However none of this supreme irony is any comfort for those companies which naively entrusted this dog turd with their financial future, and as Bloomberg reports, the credit reductions come at a dire time for restaurants and shops across the country. In normal times, small businesses have about a month of cash on hand, according to a 2016 study by JPMorgan. That means they’re particularly vulnerable as major cities across the country continue to expand shelter-in-place orders.
On Deck began putting holds on customers’ ability to draw on their lines of credit if they hadn’t done so in the last 30 days. Customers affected by the holds have been asked to send the company recent bank statements to have the holds lifted. Jim Larkin, a spokesman for On Deck, said the firm will “continue to serve and support our existing customers and are selectively lending to new customers.”
Fundbox, a venture-capital backed small-business lender based in San Francisco, has also limited some customers’ ability to draw on their credit lines.
“Like many companies that serve small businesses, we’ve had to make changes that have affected some of our customers,” Tim Donovan, a spokesman for Fundbox, said in emailed statement. “While these decisions have not been easy, it will allow us to continue to serve the majority of our small-business customers now and in the future.”
Kabbage customers who called to ask what happened were told that their accounts were under review. An employee at Kabbage, who asked for anonymity to protect their job, said that customer-service agents were instructed not to tell borrowers that the company had suspended credit lines across the board.
Michael Figueroa, a security contractor in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said the representative he talked with was apologetic. “Hey, I don’t even know if I’m going to be working here tomorrow,” he recalled the agent saying.
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So far it’s only the non-banks that have taken the axe their existing loan commitments. The good news: the banks have so far been resilient and not a single prominent bank has left its clients in the cold. However, with the US economy entering a depression, hundreds of US companies have drawn $300BN just in case it’s only a matter of time before the banks go where the non-banks have so boldly gone in the past few days.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided to declare a coronavirus emergency, according to the Nikkei, as new cases in the capital surged at a record pace. And while the Japanese publication notes that the government will hold an unofficial meeting of a panel of experts and start preparing for the declaration, Kyodo reported moments ago that Japan will declare a state of emergency on April 7, which would take effect on April 8.
An emergency declaration gives governors in the areas covered formal powers, such as issuing requests that people stay home; Tokyo and surrounding areas, as well as Osaka, are expected to be affected by the declaration.
Abe has been criticized for not having already declared an emergency – a hesitance thought by many to stem from a strong desire to hold the Olympics this summer in Tokyo as originally planned. The International Olympic Committee decided in late March to postpone the games to 2021 after consulting with the prime minister and others.
And yet, a conflict is set to emerge almost instantly because Japan’s constitution does not permit the government to demand that individuals stay home, owing to civil liberties concerns. Is Japan – which already buys billions in stocks just to avoid a market crash and preserve social order – about to also have a constituational crisis?
In any case, we find it strange that there were almost “no cases” in the weeks leading up to Japan’s reluctant decision to postpone this year’s Olympics, only to see a sudden record surge afterwards as Japan’s cases “mysteriously” soared, demonstrating once again that the coronavirus – or rather the tracking of its case and death toll – is first and foremost a political priority.
Abe met with parties including Health Minister Katsunobu Kato and Yasutoshi Nishimura, the economic and fiscal policy minister, on Sunday to discuss the spread of infections.
“If necessary, we will decide [to declare an emergency] without hesitation,” said Nishimura, who heads the government’s coronavirus response, on a show of public broadcaster NHK on Sunday. “We are looking for signs of an overshoot,” he said, referring to an explosion in cases, and noted that the atmosphere has grown extremely tense. On the same program, Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike called on the central government to issue an emergency declaration promptly.
The U.S. now has the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases globally, and modelling predicts that the country could see about 100,000 to 200,000 total deaths. Unfortunately, as Visual Capitalist’s Jenna Ross details below, adults aged 65 or older – about 16% of the U.S. population – are at much higher risk of both severe illness and death.
Today’s chart uses U.S. Census Bureau data to map the percentage of the population that is 65 years or older by state. It also outlines the urban areas that are most heavily skewed towards this older age group.
Proportion of Seniors by State
Below is the full breakdown of the U.S. senior population by state, using the latest available data from 2018.
Maine tops the list with 20.6% of its population comprising adults age 65 or older. At the other end of the scale, Utah’s seniors make up only 11.1% of its population.
Notably, Florida has the second highest percentage and number of seniors nationwide. Its governor just announced the state’s stay-at-home order on April 1st, after taking criticism for refusing to do so earlier.
New York, the current global hot spot of COVID-19, is close to the national average with 16.4% of its population aged 65 or older. However, with over 3.2 million seniors, the sheer volume of individuals needing hospitalization has already put a strain on the state’s healthcare system. Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state will run out of its current supply of ventilators in less than a week.
The Most Vulnerable Urban Areas
On a local level, which places have the highest proportion of seniors? Based on all urban areas* with a population of 250,000 or more, here’s how the top 50 looks:
*Urban areas consist of a downtown core and adjacent territories
With 6 areas in the top 10, Florida is quite vulnerable at the local level as well. Other states with multiple areas on the list include Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
The Senior Population of Current U.S. Hotspots
To determine the vulnerability of current COVID-19 hotspots, we compared U.S. counties with a high number of cases per capita against their percentage of seniors.
Counties at the bottom left have low readings on both metrics. Conversely, counties in the top right have a dangerous combination: a high concentration of cases and vulnerable seniors.
Multiple counties in New York occupy the top right quadrant, with Yonkers being the worst off. Los Angeles county, which has a similar population to all counties in New York City, has fewer cases and a smaller proportion of seniors.
To date, outbreaks have been mostly focused in urban areas where populations tend to be younger. However, as COVID-19 begins infiltrating rural areas, healthcare systems will need to contend with both older age groups and fewer resources.
Food Banks Overwhelmed As America’s “Working Poor” Starve During Lockdown
America is crashing into a depression. In just two weeks, 10 million people have claimed unemployment benefits. This has put unprecedented stress on food bank networks across the country, a new investigation via The Guardian shows.
The US labor market is in free fall – the increasing lockdowns across major US metropolitan areas have forced millions of people out of work and into a hunger crisis.
The Guardian shows demand for food aid in some regions of the country has surged eightfold in recent weeks as RealInvestmentAdvice.com’s Lance Roberts warns the unemployment rates in the US could spike to levels not seen since the “Great Depression,” or about 15-20% in the second quarter.
The National Guard has been deployed for a variety of reasons: One is to support local area hospital systems, another is to maintain social order, and now soldiers in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Phoenix have supported food banks to ensure shortages do not materialize, mostly because that would trigger social unrest among the working poor.
“I’ve been in this business over 30 years, and nothing compares to what we’re seeing now. Not even when the steel mills closed down did we see increased demand like this,” said Sheila Christopher, director of Hunger-Free Pennsylvania, which represents 18 food banks across 67 counties.
The Guardian provides a snapshot of the unprecedented demand hitting food banks:
In Amherst, home to the University of Massachusetts’ largest campus, the pantry distributed 849% more food in March compared with the previous year. The second-largest increase in western Massachusetts was 748% at the Pittsfield Salvation Army pantry.
The Grace Klein community food pantry in Jefferson county, which has the largest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Alabama, provided 5,076 individuals with food boxes last week – a 90% increase on the previous week.
In southern Arizona, demand has doubled, with pantries supplying groceries to 4,000 households every day – double the number supplied in March 2019. “We saw an increase during the federal government shutdown but nothing as rapid, massive or overwhelming as this,” said Michael McDonald, CEO of the Community Food Bank of South Arizona.
A helpline set up by the Greater Pittsburgh community food bank has received more than a thousand calls in the past two weeks, 90% of which came from newly unemployed people. Here, pantries ordered 50% to 60% more food for March and April than usual.
The Lakeview pantry in Chicago is on track to provide food for as many as 2,000 individuals this week – compared with 1,100 before the coronavirus crisis.
The north Florida food bank, which relied heavily on contributions from retailers, has seen donations drop by 85% to 90% as shoppers bulk-buy, leaving shelves empty. But donations from restaurants, golf tournaments and even Disney World have increased, so the food bank is switching to ready meals, paying furloughed chefs to cook for thousands of senior citizens in housing facilities.
In Las Vegas, the Three Square food bank has increased weekly food distribution by 30%, from 1m to 1.3m lbs of food. New drive-thru distribution centres have been set up across the valley as 170 of its 180 distribution outlets have been forced to temporarily close due to CDC social distancing guidelines. “Every line at every distribution centre exceeds the amount of food in our trucks,” said chief operating officer Larry Scott.
The Kansas City-based Harvesters food bank, which serves 16 counties in north-east Kansas and 10 in north-west Missouri, sent out 12,000 boxes to pantries on Monday 23 March – a 140% rise on the 5,000 boxes typically ordered. “It was the largest distribution day in our 40-year history,” said its communications manager, Gene Hallinan.
Feeding America spokesperson Zuani Villarreal said the surge in job losses “is a perfect storm impacting food banks.”
The evolution of the virus crisis could be social destabilization across low-income areas of inner cities. As we’ve been warning for a while, many adults have no emergency savings and insurmountable debts. Most people don’t have enough funds to bridge their finances for three months, which brings us to our piece from last week that shows cars lined up to receive food from a food bank in Duquesne, Pennsylvania.
“First, we saw people who lived paycheck to paycheck, got laid off and didn’t know where the next meal was coming from, followed by those who had a couple of weeks of savings. Now, people who knew about us because they donated or volunteered are coming in for food,” said Jerry Brown, media spokesman for St Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. “The 2008 recession doesn’t touch this. It’s a different ballgame.”
So, what happens when tens of millions of jobless Americans become hangry? Is social unrest next?
Futures Surge As Trump Touts “Glimmers Of Hope” In Italy & New York
Officials in New York and Italy reported notable declines in new cases and deaths on Sunday, helping to inspire the most positive reaction in futures to kick off a new trading week since the ‘rona rout.
Futures surged out the gate as President Trump struck an upbeat tone during Sunday evening’s press conference (even as his critics continued to urge the mainstream press to drop coverage of the president’s briefings). Riffing off the data reported out of New York and Italy, Trump and Pence noted what appears to be the first “glimmers of progress.”
“We are beginning to see the glimmers of progress,” Pence said at a White House news conference on Sunday. “The experts will tell me not to jump to any conclusions, and I’m not, but like your president I’m an optimistic person and I’m hopeful.”
After three straight days of “pain”, “hell” and more gloom and doom from Trump, his decision to rapidly embrace some of the first encouraging signs of progress in months was apparently exactly what traders needed to hear, considering that they completely ignored another record jump in new cases reported out of Tokyo (Japan’s nationwide death toll just broke above 100) and an NYT report claiming 1000s of deaths in the US may have gone uncounted.
Trump bundled this with the typical rundown of various federal government plans, partnerships and deployments, as expressing that “we hope we’re seeing a leveling off” in the coming days.
ES was up more than 3% at one point, and Japan’s benchmarks climbed more than 2%, snapping a five-day losing streak even as PM Shinzo Abe reportedly prepares for an emergency declaration. The yen dropped along with Treasuries as haven demand receded. Crude oil prices slumped as uncertainty remains over a proposed meeting of supplier nations that is planned for April 9.
And an old favorite gif made a resurgence on twitter to mark the occasion.
The era of peak globalisation is over. For those of us not on the front line, clearing the mind and thinking how to live in an altered world is the task at hand…
The deserted streets will fill again, and we will leave our screen-lit burrows blinking with relief. But the world will be different from how we imagined it in what we thought were normal times. This is not a temporary rupture in an otherwise stable equilibrium: the crisis through which we are living is a turning point in history.
The era of peak globalisation is over. An economic system that relied on worldwide production and long supply chains is morphing into one that will be less interconnected. A way of life driven by unceasing mobility is shuddering to a stop. Our lives are going to be more physically constrained and more virtual than they were. A more fragmented world is coming into being that in some ways may be more resilient.
The once formidable British state is being rapidly reinvented, and on a scale not seen before. Acting with emergency powers authorised by parliament, the government has tossed economic orthodoxy to the winds. Savaged by years of imbecilic austerity, the NHS – like the armed forces, police, prisons, fire service, care workers and cleaners – has its back to the wall. But with the noble dedication of its workers, the virus will be held at bay. Our political system will survive intact. Not many countries will be so fortunate. Governments everywhere are struggling through the narrow passage between suppressing the virus and crashing the economy. Many will stumble and fall.
In the view of the future to which progressive thinkers cling, the future is an embellished version of the recent past. No doubt this helps them preserve some semblance of sanity. It also undermines what is now our most vital attribute: the ability to adapt and fashion different ways of life. The task ahead is to build economies and societies that are more durable, and more humanly habitable, than those that were exposed to the anarchy of the global market.
It does not mean a shift to small-scale localism. Human numbers are too large for local self-sufficiency to be viable, and most of humankind is not willing to return to the small, closed communities of a more distant past. But the hyperglobalisation of the last few decades is not coming back either. The virus has exposed fatal weaknesses in the economic system that was patched up after the 2008 financial crisis. Liberal capitalism is bust.
With all its talk of freedom and choice, liberalism was in practice the experiment of dissolving traditional sources of social cohesion and political legitimacy and replacing them with the promise of rising material living standards. This experiment has now run its course. Suppressing the virus necessitates an economic shutdown that can only be temporary, but when the economy restarts, it will be in a world where governments act to curb the global market.
A situation in which so many of the world’s essential medical supplies originate in China – or any other single country – will not be tolerated. Production in these and other sensitive areas will be re-shored as a matter of national security. The notion that a country such as Britain could phase out farming and depend on imports for food will be dismissed as the nonsense it always has been. The airline industry will shrink as people travel less. Harder borders are going to be an enduring feature of the global landscape. A narrow goal of economic efficiency will no longer be practicable for governments.
The question is, what will replace rising material living standards as the basis of society? One answer green thinkers have given is what John Stuart Mill in his Principles of Political Economy (1848) called a “stationary-state economy”. Expanding production and consumption would no longer be an overriding goal, and the increase in human numbers curbed. Unlike most liberals today, Mill recognised the danger of overpopulation. A world filled with human beings, he wrote, would be one without “flowery wastes” and wildlife. He also understood the dangers of central planning. The stationary state would be a market economy in which competition is encouraged. Technological innovation would continue, along with improvements in the art of living.
In many ways this is an appealing vision, but it is also unreal. There is no world authority to enforce an end to growth, just as there is none to fight the virus. Contrary to the progressive mantra, recently repeated by Gordon Brown, global problems do not always have global solutions. Geopolitical divisions preclude anything like world government. If one existed, existing states would compete to control it. The belief that this crisis can be solved by an unprecedented outbreak of international cooperation is magical thinking in its purest form.
Of course economic expansion is not indefinitely sustainable. For one thing, it can only worsen climate change and turn the planet into a garbage dump. But with highly uneven living standards, still rising human numbers and intensifying geopolitical rivalries, zero growth is also unsustainable. If the limits of growth are eventually accepted, it will be because governments make the protection of their citizens their most important objective. Whether democratic or authoritarian, states that do not meet this Hobbesian test will fail.
* * *
The pandemic has abruptly accelerated geopolitical change. Combined with the collapse in oil prices, the uncontrolled spread of the virus in Iran could destabilise its theocratic regime. With revenues plunging, Saudi Arabia is also at risk. No doubt many will wish both of them good riddance. But there can be no assurance that a meltdown in the Gulf will produce anything other than a long period of chaos. Despite years of talk about diversifying, these regimes are still hostages of oil and even if the price recovers somewhat, the economic hit of the global shutdown will be devastating.
In contrast, the advance of East Asia will surely continue. The most successful responses to the epidemic thus far have been in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. It is hard to believe their cultural traditions, which focus on collective well-being more than personal autonomy, have not played a role in their success. They have also resisted the cult of the minimal state. It will not be surprising if they adjust to de-globalisation better than many Western countries.
China’s position is more complex. Given its record of cover-ups and opaque statistics, its performance during the pandemic is hard to assess. Certainly it is not a model any democracy could or should emulate. As the new NHS Nightingale shows, it is not only authoritarian regimes that can build hospitals in two weeks. No one knows the full human costs of the Chinese shutdown. Even so, Xi Jinping’s regime looks to have benefited from the pandemic. The virus has provided a rationale for expanding the surveillance state and introducing even stronger political control. Instead of wasting the crisis, Xi is using it to expand the country’s influence. China is inserting itself in place of the EU by assisting distressed national governments, such as Italy. Many of the masks and testing kits it has supplied have proved to be faulty, but the fact seems not to have dented Beijing’s propaganda campaign.
The EU has responded to the crisis by revealing its essential weakness. Few ideas are so scorned by higher minds than sovereignty. In practice it signifies the capacity to execute a comprehensive, coordinated and flexible emergency plan of the kind being implemented in the UK and other countries. The measures that have already been taken are larger than any implemented in the Second World War. In their most important respects they are also the opposite of what was done then, when the British population was mobilised as never before, and unemployment fell dramatically. Today, aside from those in essential services, Britain’s workers have been demobilised. If it goes on for many months, the shutdown will demand an even larger socialisation of the economy.
Whether the desiccated neoliberal structures of the EU can do anything like this is doubtful. Hitherto sacrosanct rules have been torn up by the European Central Bank’s bond buying programme and relaxing limits on state aid to industry. But the resistance to fiscal burden-sharing of northern European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands may block the way to rescuing Italy – a country too big to be crushed like Greece, but possibly also too costly to save. As the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte said in March:
“If Europe does not rise to this unprecedented challenge, the whole European structure loses its raison d’être for the people.”
The Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic has been blunter and more realistic:
“European solidarity does not exist… that was a fairy tale. The only country that can help us in this hard situation is the People’s Republic of China. To the rest of them, thanks for nothing.”
The EU’s fundamental flaw is that it is incapable of discharging the protective functions of a state. The break-up of the eurozone has been predicted so often that it may seem unthinkable. Yet under the stresses they face today, the disintegration of European institutions is not unrealistic. Free movement has already been shut down. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent blackmailing of the EU by threatening to allow migrants to pass through his borders, and the endgame in Syria’s Idlib province, could lead to hundreds of thousands, even millions, of refugees fleeing to Europe. (It is hard to see what social distancing might mean in huge, overcrowded and insanitary refugee camps.) Another migrant crisis in conjunction with pressure on the dysfunctional euro could prove fatal.
If the EU survives, it may be as something like the Holy Roman empire in its later years, a phantom that lingers on for generations while power is exercised elsewhere. Vitally necessary decisions are already being taken by nation states. Since the political centre is no longer a leading force and with much of the left wedded to the failed European project, many governments will be dominated by the far right.
An increasing influence on the EU will come from Russia. In the struggle with the Saudis that triggered the oil price collapse in March 2020, Putin has played the stronger hand. Whereas for the Saudis the fiscal break-even level – the price needed to pay for public services and keep the state solvent – is around $80 a barrel, for Russia it may be less than half that. At the same time Putin is consolidating Russia’s position as an energy power. The Nord Stream offshore pipelines that run through the Baltics secure reliable supplies of natural gas to Europe. By the same token they lock Europe into dependency on Russia and enable it to use energy as a political weapon. With Europe balkanised, Russia, too, looks set to expand its sphere of influence. Like China it is stepping in to replace the faltering EU, flying in doctors and equipment to Italy.
In the US, Donald Trump plainly considers refloating the economy more important than containing the virus. A 1929-style stock market slide and unemployment levels worse than those in the 1930s could pose an existential threat to his presidency. James Bullard, the CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, has suggested the American jobless rate could reach 30 per cent – higher than in the Great Depression. On the other hand, with the US’s decentralised system of government; a ruinously expensive healthcare system and tens of millions uninsured; a colossal prison population, of which many are old and infirm; and cities with sizeable numbers of homeless people and an already large opioid epidemic; curtailing the shutdown could mean the virus spreading uncontrollably, with devastating effects. (Trump is not alone in taking this risk. Sweden has not so far imposed anything like the lockdown in force in other countries.)
Unlike the British programme, Trump’s $2trn stimulus plan is mostly another corporate bailout. Yet if polls are to be believed increasing numbers of Americans approve of his handling of the epidemic. What if Trump emerges from this catastrophe with the support of an American majority?
Whether or not he retains his hold on power, the US’s position in the world has changed irreversibly. What is fast unravelling is not only the hyperglobalisation of recent decades but the global order set in place at the end of the Second World War. Puncturing an imaginary equilibrium, the virus has hastened a process of disintegration that has been under way for many years.
In his seminal Plagues and Peoples the Chicago historian William H McNeill wrote:
It is always possible that some hitherto obscure parasitic organism may escape its accustomed ecological niche and expose the dense human populations that have become so conspicuous a feature of the Earth to some fresh and perchance devastating mortality.
It is not yet known how Covid-19 escaped its niche, though there is a suspicion that Wuhan’s “wet markets”, where wildlife is sold, may have played a role. In 1976, when McNeill’s book was first published, the destruction of the habitats of exotic species was nowhere near as far gone as it is today. As globalisation has advanced, so has the risk of infectious diseases spreading. The Spanish Flu of 1918-20 became a global pandemic in a world without mass air transportation. Commenting on how plagues have been understood by historians, McNeill observed: “For them as for others, occasional disastrous outbreaks of infectious disease remained sudden and unpredictable interruptions of the norm, essentially beyond historical explanation.” Many later studies have come to similar conclusions.
Yet the notion persists that pandemics are blips rather than an integral part of history. Lying behind this is the belief that humans are no longer part of the natural world and can create an autonomous ecosystem, separate from the rest of the biosphere. Covid-19 is telling them they cannot. It is only by using science that we can defend ourselves against this pestilence. Mass antibody tests and a vaccine will be crucial. But permanent changes in how we live will have to be made if we are to be less vulnerable in future.
The texture of everyday life is already altered. A sense of fragility is everywhere. It is not only society that feels shaky. So does the human position in the world. Viral images reveal human absence in different ways. Wild boars are roaming in the towns of northern Italy, while in Lopburi in Thailand gangs of monkeys no longer fed by tourists are fighting in the streets. Inhuman beauty and a fierce struggle for life have sprung up in cities emptied by the virus.
As a number of commentators have noted, a post-apocalyptic future of the kind projected in the fiction of JG Ballard has become our present reality. But it is important to understand what this “apocalypse” reveals. For Ballard, human societies were stage props that could be knocked over at any moment. Norms that seemed built into human nature vanished when you left the theatre. The most harrowing of Ballard’s experiences as a child in 1940s Shanghai were not in the prison camp, where many inmates were steadfast and kindly in their treatment of others. A resourceful and venturesome boy, Ballard enjoyed much of his time there. It was when the camp collapsed as the war drew to a close, he told me, that he witnessed the worst examples of ruthless selfishness and motiveless cruelty.
The lesson he learnt was that these were not world-ending events. What is commonly described as an apocalypse is the normal course of history. Many are left with lasting traumas. But the human animal is too sturdy and too versatile to be broken by these upheavals. Life goes on, if differently than before. Those who talk of this as a Ballardian moment have not noticed how human beings adjust, and even find fulfilment, in the extreme situations he portrays.
Technology will help us adapt in our present extremity. Physical mobility can be reduced by shifting many of our activities into cyberspace. Offices, schools, universities, GP surgeries and other work centres are likely to change permanently. Virtual communities set up during the epidemic have enabled people to get to know one another better than they ever did before.
There will be celebrations as the pandemic recedes, but there may be no clear point when the threat of infection is over. Many people may migrate to online environments like those in Second Life, a virtual world where people meet, trade and interact in bodies and worlds of their choosing. Other adaptations may be uncomfortable for moralists. Online pornography will likely boom, and much internet dating may consist of erotic exchanges that never end in a meeting of bodies. Augmented reality technology may be used to simulate fleshly encounters and virtual sex could soon be normalised. Whether this is a move towards the good life may not be the most useful question to ask. Cyberspace relies on an infrastructure that can be damaged or destroyed by war or natural disaster. The internet allows us to avoid the isolation that plagues have brought in the past. It cannot enable human beings to escape their mortal flesh, or avoid the ironies of progress.
* * *
What the virus is telling us is not only that progress is reversible – a fact even progressives seem to have grasped – but that it can be self-undermining. To take the most obvious example, globalisation produced some major benefits – millions have been lifted out of poverty. This achievement is now under threat. Globalisation begat the de-globalisation that is now under way.
As the prospect of ever-rising living standards fades, other sources of authority and legitimacy are re-emerging. Liberal or socialist, the progressive mind detests national identity with passionate intensity. There is plenty in history to show how it can be misused. But the nation state is increasingly the most powerful force driving large-scale action. Dealing with the virus requires a collective effort that will not be mobilised for the sake of universal humanity.
Altruism has limits just as much as growth. There will be examples of extraordinary selflessness before the worst of the crisis is over. In Britain an over half-million strong volunteer army has signed up to assist the NHS. But it would be unwise to rely on human sympathy alone to get us through. Kindness to strangers is so precious that it must be rationed.
This is where the protective state comes in. At its core, the British state has always been Hobbesian. Peace and strong government have been the overriding priorities. At the same time this Hobbesian state has mostly rested on consent, particularly in times of national emergency. Being shielded from danger has trumped freedom from interference by government.
How much of their freedom people will want back when the pandemic has peaked is an open question. They show little taste for the enforced solidarity of socialism, but they may happily accept a regime of bio-surveillance for the sake of better protection of their health. Digging ourselves out of the pit will demand more state intervention not less, and of a highly inventive kind. Governments will have to do a lot more in underwriting scientific research and technological innovation. Though the state may not always be larger its influence will be pervasive, and by old-world standards more intrusive. Post-liberal government will be the norm for the foreseeable future.
It is only by recognising the frailties of liberal societies that their most essential values can be preserved. Along with fairness they include individual liberty, which as well as being worthwhile in itself is a necessary check on government. But those who believe personal autonomy is the innermost human need betray an ignorance of psychology, not least their own. For practically everyone, security and belonging are as important, often more so. Liberalism was, in effect, a systematic denial of this fact.
An advantage of quarantine is that it can be used to think afresh. Clearing the mind of clutter and thinking how to live in an altered world is the task at hand. For those of us who are not serving on the front line, this should be enough for the duration.
Despite Soaring Body-Count Across The Nation, Americans Continue To ‘Resist’ Lockdown Orders
President Trump reiterated warnings from the last several press briefings on Saturday, indicating that the country should brace for the “toughest week” yet, as confirmed cases and deaths continue to rise on an exponential curve.
And despite the more than 308,000 cases and 8,407 deaths, Americans continue to defy the stay-at-home government enforced orders that cover 90% of the country.
Traffic analytics firm INRIX transportation told The Washington Post that daily traffic nationwide remains around 60% of normal levels. The highways are still filled with vehicles as many resist public health lockdown orders:
“In California, where a stay-at-home order took effect March 19, daily trips statewide remain at 58% of normal levels, according to Wejo, a British company that collects data from sensors in some passenger vehicles.
On Wednesday – two days after the District of Columbia, Virginia and Maryland enacted stay-at-home orders – daily car trips in the region remained at 51% of normal in D.C., 53% in Maryland and 59% in Virginia, according to Wejo, which does not include trucks or other commercial vehicles.
Washington state officials announced a stay-at-home order March 23. More than a week later, distances traveled on Seattle roads remained at about 55% of normal, according to INRIX, a Kirkland, Washington-based traffic analytics firm that crunches data from vehicle navigation systems, cellphones and other devices,” reported The Post.
With traffic halved across major metros and along many highways is unprecedented – it’s becoming evident that plenty of Americans are still on the roads despite strict stay-at-home public health orders across the country.
“Some of the remaining traffic, experts say, stems from motorists heading to and from the many worksites that have been deemed “essential”: health-care facilities, supermarkets and liquor stores, construction sites, banks, dry cleaners, hardware stores, pet stores, government facilities, and auto and bicycle repair shops, among others. The Washington region’s orders also exempt plumbers, electricians and others needed for home repairs,” said The Post.
The resistance to shutdown states and or even certain geographical regions has been evident by lawmakers in the Southern US and Rust Belt.
Kay Ivey, the Republican Gov. of Alabama, said now is “not the time to order people to shelter in place.”
“Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,” Ivey said, suggesting that Alabama would not be a hard-hit area of the country.
In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Parson has been late to the game in issuing a stay-at-home order, that will go into effect on Monday. Parson was recently heard stating that he will not “make a blanket policy,” adding, “It’s going to come down to individual responsibilities.”
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has also been late in issuing a stay-at-home order, which was finally put forth last week amid rising deaths and cases across the state.
Tampa-area megachurch Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne defied a local order on banning of mass gatherings last weekend by holding a church service – was arrested by authorities on Monday.
Over the last month, President Trump has shifted his rhetoric on the virus from calling it “hysteria” and a Democratic hoax, to now announcing the outbreak as a national emergency and urging all Americans to work from home and avoid public spaces. However, a large swath of Americans still believes the virus is “fake news,” and are not letting the virus affect their daily lives, which suggests containing the virus might be even more difficult than expected for government agencies, and why stricter lockdowns could be next.
As for more stringent lockdowns that could be ahead, take note of what happened in Panama last week, as the government issued a gender-based lockdown limiting male and female from traveling to the supermarket on certain days. There’s even rumor in Mid-Atlantic/ Northeast states, that tighter lockdowns could be ahead as National Guard troops position around major metros.
And with many Americans resisting lockdowns, we noted last week that “intermittent” lockdowns and “widespread surveillance” to mitigate the virus spread could be the norm through 2022.
