Saturday 8 February 2020

Special Update 08/02/2020 Coronavirus Midday Update.


Baltic Dry Index. 415 -16 Brent Crude 54.47 Spot Gold 1570

Brexit now in effect.
Trump’s Nuclear China Tariffs Now in effect.
The USA v EU trade war started October 18. Now in effect.

Coronavirus Cases 9/2/20 China 37,601   Deaths 814 (Maybe.)

The head of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice, Li Fuying, told reporters that people deliberately concealing contacts or refusing isolation could be punished with death.

With coronavirus events happening fast, I decided to do a Saturday noon update. 

The official numbers are just that, the official numbers, but announcing “that people deliberately concealing contacts or refusing isolation could be punished with death,” suggests that Beijing knows of a far bigger problem underway.

Whether Beijing has accurate other figures, is open to question. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that they have far higher figures of both cases and deaths, but they’re not accurate either. Just more accurate than the official figures.

Below, Saturday’s noon update. Next week’s return to work across China, should give us a much better idea, of the coming hit to China’s economy, and with it the hit to the global economy.

By the end of the month we should know if the return to work has increased the spread and size of China’s epidemic.

As China returns to work, it is hardly business as usual

February 8, 2020 / 8:41 AM
SHENZHEN, China/BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese economy will sputter towards normal on Monday after the coronavirus outbreak forced an extended holiday, although numerous stores and factories will remain shut and many white collar employees will continue working from home.

The usually week-long Lunar New Year holiday was extended by 10 days in much of China amid mounting alarm over an epidemic that as of Saturday morning had killed 722 people. 

Huge cities including Beijing and Shanghai seem like ghost towns, with shops and restaurants closed or empty, and as containment measures including transportation curbs are enforced in many parts of the country. Some cities are keeping schools closed and restrictions on movements remain.

Many employers in the southern technology hub of Shenzhen are taking precautions to prevent workers from returning in large crowds, asking those who have travelled from elsewhere to self-quarantine for up to 14 days.

Calls to the hotlines of an NGO serving migrant workers in nearby city of Guangzhou have multiplied in recent days.

“People are asking, ‘what if my factory hasn’t put enough safety measures in place? Will there be a notice suspending work again? How do I get in to work if roads are sealed off?’” said Ice Huang, a spokeswoman for the Inno Community Development Organisation.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) said on Friday its retail stores in China would stay closed, even as it worked toward opening its corporate offices and contact centres.

Apple supplier Foxconn (2317.TW) plans only to “gradually” restart its factories with a view to resuming full production in late February, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

While in Shanghai, the city government said Tesla’s (TSLA.O) factory would reopen on Monday.

The toll on China’s already-slowing economy has been heavy, with Goldman Sachs cutting its first quarter GDP target to 4% from 5.6% previously and saying an even deeper hit is possible.

“It’s certainly not going to be a return to normal next week,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics in Singapore. “The longer this disruption continues the higher the risk it affects employment and the higher the risk of a much bigger hit on the economy,” he said.

In Shenzhen, businesses looking to reopen were required to check the recent travel history of all staff and implement temperature checks and prevention measures such as providing masks. Similar guidelines were in place elsewhere.
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U.S. citizen died from coronavirus in China's Wuhan

February 8, 2020 / 5:13 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - A 60-year old U.S. citizen diagnosed with coronavirus died at Jinyintan Hospital in China’s Wuhan on Feb. 6, a U.S. embassy spokesman in Beijing said on Saturday, in what appeared to be the first death of an American from the outbreak.

“We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss,” the spokesman told Reuters. “Out of the respect for the family’s privacy, we have no further comment.” 

As of noon Thursday, there had been 19 cases of foreigners infected with the coronavirus, of which two had been discharged from hospital and 17 were being quarantined and treated, Hua Chunying, spokeswoman at the Chinese foreign ministry, told reporters at a regular briefing last Thursday.

Japanese man hospitalized with pneumonia in Wuhan dies, coronavirus suspected

February 8, 2020 / 4:54 AM
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese man hospitalized with pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicentre of a coronavirus outbreak, has died, Japan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The man in his sixties was suspected of having been infected with the coronavirus but due to difficulties in diagnosing the disease the cause of death was given as viral pneumonia, the foreign ministry said citing Chinese medical authorities. 

The man is potentially the first Japanese to have died of the disease, as a foreign ministry official said the government does not know of any Japanese that have died from the coronavirus epidemic, which has killed more than 700 people in mainland China and infected over 34,000.

The death in Wuhan came as the number of passengers infected with the virus from a cruise liner quarantined in Japanese port of Yokohama jumped to 64 on Saturday.

The virus has spread around the world, with 320 cases now in 27 countries and regions outside mainland China, a Reuters tally of official statements showed.

Thailand reports seven new coronavirus cases - health ministry

February 8, 2020 / 5:59 AM
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand’s public health ministry reported seven new cases of the coronavirus on Saturday, including three Thais and four Chinese.

The new cases brought the total reported in the country to 32.

Five Britons contract coronavirus in French ski resort

February 8, 2020 / 9:59 AM
PARIS (Reuters) - Five British nationals including a child have been diagnosed with the coronavirus in France, after staying in the same ski chalet and coming into contact with a person who had been in Singapore, Health Minister Agnes Buzyn said on Saturday.

The total number of people infected with the virus in France has now reached 11. 

Buzyn said the group of people newly infected with the virus were not in a serious condition.

They had formed “a cluster, a grouping around one original case” after staying in the same chalet, in the Contamine Monjoie resort in Savoie in eastern France.

“That original case was brought to our attention last night, it is a British national who had returned from Singapore where he had stayed between January 20 and 23, and he arrived in France on January 24 for four days,” Buzyn said.
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Latest coronavirus study implicates fecal transmission

Issued on: 08/02/2020 - 00:30
Diarrhea may be a secondary path of transmission for the novel coronavirus, scientists said Friday following the publication of the latest study reporting patients with abdominal symptoms and loose stool.

The primary path is believed to be virus-laden droplets from an infected person's cough, though researchers in early cases have said they focused heavily on patients with respiratory symptoms and may have overlooked those linked to the digestive tract.

A total of 14 out of 138 patients (10 percent) in a Wuhan hospital who were studied in the new paper by Chinese authors in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) initially presented with diarrhea and nausea one or two days prior to development of fever and labored breathing.

The first US patient diagnosed with 2019-nCoV also experienced loose bowel movements for two days and the virus was subsequently detected in his stool, and there have been other such cases in China documented in the Lancet, albeit infrequently.

"Importantly, 2019-nCoV has been reported elsewhere in the feces of patients with atypical abdominal symptoms, similar to SARS which was also shed in urine, suggesting a fecal transmission route which is highly transmissible," William Keevil, a professor of environmental healthcare at the University of Southampton said in a comment to the UK's Science Media Centre.

The possibility is not totally surprising to scientists, given that the new virus belongs to the same family as SARS.

Fecal transmission of SARS was implicated in sickening hundreds in Hong Kong's Amoy Gardens housing estate in 2003. A rising plume of warm air originating in bathrooms contaminated several apartments and was transported by wind to adjacent buildings in the complex.

Based on the literature, "The 2019-nCoV virus found in stool may be transmitted through fecal spread," added Jiayu Liao, a bioengineer at the University of California, Riverside.

But, he added, "We still do not know how long this virus can survive outside the body -- HIV can only survive roughly 30 minutes outside the body -- and what temperature range the 2019-nCoV is sensitive to."

Fecal spread could present new challenges to the virus's containment, but is more likely to be a problem inside hospitals, which can become "amplifiers" of epidemics, said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto.
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Cruise line bans China citizens; Outrage as doctor who sounded coronavirus alarm dies

February 6, 2020 / 1:14 AM / Updated 7 hours ago
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Feb 7 (Reuters) - A major cruise line on Friday took the extraordinary step of banning citizens of China regardless of when they were last there, while there was sorrow and anger over the coronavirus death of a doctor from Wuhan who had been reprimanded for sounding an early warning about the disease.

The death of Li Wenliang, 34, came as President Xi Jinping reassured the United States and the World Health Organization (WHO) of transparency and maximum effort to combat the virus.

---- After two days in which Hubei reported fewer new cases of coronavirus and deaths, spurring some optimism, there was an uptick on Friday.

The Hubei health commission website reported 82 new deaths and 2,841 new cases in the province, taking the mainland China totals to more than 700 deaths and over 34,000 infections

---- Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd issued a statement on Friday saying: “Any guest or crewmen traveling from, to, or through mainland China, Hong Kong or Macau less than 15 days prior to their sailing will be unable to board any of our ships.”

But it did not stop there. It also said, “Any guests holding a Chinese, Hong Kong or Macau passport, regardless of when they were there last, will not be allowed to board our ships.”
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“However, as bad as things were, the worst was yet to come, for germs would kill more people than bullets. By the time that last fever broke and the last quarantine sign came down, the world had lost 3-5% of its population.”

Charles River Editors, The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic: The History and Legacy of the World’s Deadliest Influenza Outbreak

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished January

DJIA: 28,256 +97 Up. NASDAQ: 9,151 +152 Up. SP500: 3,226 +130 Up.

All higher again, but it’s not a buy signal I would take. The rally is all down to the Fed monetizing at a rate of about 100 billion a month. I continue to look on the Fed’s latest stock bubble as an exit rally, made all the more urgent by the still increasing coronavirus crisis

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