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Coronavirus Cases 08/4/20
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Latest Content COVID-19 Archive
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"There
is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit
expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the
result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a
final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved."
Ludwig
von Mises
Well it was fun
while it lasted, but bear market rallies never last. They can’t last until the
underlying economic pain and destruction has run its full course.
At present, we are
only in the beginning of the global economic pain and destruction. We haven’t
seen anything yet.
Still to come,
more unemployment, a tidal wave of bankruptcies, landlord tenant disputes, a
real estate implosion, a collapse in the velocity of money.
Deflation, and if
the central banksters and bent politicians misplay their hand, a great global
inflation and social disorder, as broken supply chains and a lack of farm
workers leads to food and goods shortages, chased by an avalanche of trillions
of newly created fiat money out of thin air
Below, when harsh
reality returns.
Asian markets mostly lower on worries about pandemic damage
Published: April 8, 2020 at 12:07
a.m. ET
Asian shares were mostly lower, gyrating in early Wednesday
trading amid uncertainty over the coronavirus outbreak, which continues to
claim more lives around the world. Japan’s Nikkei 225 NIK, 1.14% inched up 0.4% in morning trading. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 XJO, 0.42% was down 0.2%, while South Korea’s Kospi 180721, 0.14% lost nearly 0.5%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng HSI, -0.98% fell 1%, while the Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, -0.32% dipped 0.3%.
The rally on Wall Street suddenly vanished in a market dominated by sharp swings responding to the ups and downs of the news about the pandemic.
“The recent risk rally faded quickly despite recent stimulus efforts from both monetary and fiscal authorities, with market players coming to terms with the unabated rise in fatalities as the virus continues to spread,” Prakash Sakpal and Nicholas Mapa, economists at ING, said in a report.
In Asia, Japan’s state of emergency kicked in, focused on seven urban areas, including Tokyo, with strong government requests for people to stay home and restaurants and stores to close for a month. However, there were scant signs of any change in behavior during the morning rush hour.
The S&P 500 SPX, -0.16% dipped 0.2% to 2,659.41 after erasing a surge of 3.5% earlier in the day. The market’s gains faded as the price of U.S. crude oil abruptly flipped from a gain to a steep loss of more than 9%.
Even though economists say a punishing recession is inevitable, some investors have begun to look ahead to when a peak in new infections would offer some clarity about how long the downturn may last and how deep it will be.
More
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/asian-markets-mostly-lower-on-worries-about-pandemic-damage-2020-04-08?mod=mw_latestnews
NEW YORK (AP) — New York state reported 731 new
COVID-19 deaths Tuesday, its biggest jump since the start of the outbreak,
dampening some of the cautious optimism officials have expressed about efforts
to stop the spread of the virus.
The state’s death toll grew to 5,489.
The alarming surge in deaths comes as new
hospital admissions have dropped on average over several days, a possible
harbinger of the outbreak finally leveling off. Cuomo said the death tally is a
“lagging indicator” that reflects the loss of critically ill people
hospitalized earlier.
“That’s 731 people who we lost. Behind every one
of those numbers is an individual. There’s a family, there’s a mother, there’s
a father, there’s a sister, there’s a brother. So a lot of pain again today for
many New Yorkers,” Cuomo said at a briefing at the state Capitol.
The state has been recording more than 500 deaths a day since late last week.
The number of confirmed cases — which does not include infected people who have
not been tested — is close to 139,000 statewide.
----A crew member of a Navy hospital ship sent
to New York City for the coronavirus outbreak has tested positive for the
disease.
The USNS Comfort crew member tested positive
Monday and was being isolated, the Navy said in a prepared statement. The
positive test will not affect the hospital ship’s mission to receive patients,
according to the Navy.
The Comfort has treated relatively few
non-COVID-19 patients since arriving in the city last week. But President
Donald Trump said Monday he’d allow coronavirus patients aboard the ship.
The Pentagon said the ship and a military
medical hospital constructed inside a nearby Manhattan convention center now
have a total of 110 patients — a negligible number in a city where regular
hospitals are overwhelmed with thousands of sick people.
More
April 8, 2020 /
3:31 AM
BEIJING (Reuters) - Japanese automaker Nissan (7201.T)
said on Wednesday its sales in China fell 44.9% from a year earlier to 73,297
units in March, as the coronavirus epidemic continues to hit the world’s
biggest car market. Nissan, which has a joint venture with Hubei-based Dongfeng Motor (0489.HK), said it sees “signs of recovery in the market”, according to a statement.
Rival Toyota’s (7203.T) China sales dropped 15.9% year-on-year in March while Honda’s (7267.T) fell 50.8%.
April 8, 2020 /
4:47 AM
(Reuters)
- Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) told employees on Tuesday it would
furlough all non-essential workers and implement salary cuts during a shut down
of its U.S. production facilities because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Tesla said it planned to resume normal operations on May 4, barring any
significant changes, according to an email sent to U.S. employees by in-house
counsel Valerie Capers Workman, which was viewed by Reuters.
The company, which suspended production at its San Francisco Bay Area
vehicle and New York solar roof tile factories on March 24, said in the email
the decisions were part of a broader effort to manage costs and achieve
long-term plans.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The coronavirus pandemic has slashed U.S. demand for cars and forced
several other automakers to furlough U.S. workers.
Pay for salaried Tesla employees will be reduced beginning on April 13
and cuts will remain in place until the end of the second quarter, the email
said.
In the United States, workers’ pay will be cut by 10%, directors’
salaries by 20% and vice presidents’ salaries by 30%. Comparable reductions
will be implemented abroad.
Employees who cannot work from home and have not been assigned to
critical work onsite factories will be furloughed, with workers maintaining
their healthcare benefits until production resumes, the email said.
More
April 7, 2020 /
2:07 PM
LONDON (Reuters) - Global airlines cannot afford to refund cancelled
flights because of the coronavirus crisis, said the head of the industry’s
representative body IATA, and carriers are issuing vouchers instead as they
conserve cash to survive.
“The key element for us is to avoid running out of cash so refunding the
cancelled ticket for us is almost unbearable financially speaking,” IATA
Director General Alexandre De Juniac told an online news conference on Tuesday.
Airlines have been criticised by consumer groups for breaking rules over
providing refunds within set time limits.
IATA also said that one-third of global airline employees have either
been furloughed or lost their jobs.
Published: April 7, 2020 at 9:52 a.m. ET
The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program
offering $350 billion in loans to small businesses has attracted widespread
interest, but it’s also raised plenty of questions from both borrowers and
lenders.The program was created by the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that, among other things, is trying to throw a lifeline to small businesses that need money now, before the coronavirus outbreak permanently closes their doors.
The Paycheck Protection Program is meant get working capital to small businesses and enable them to keep staff on their payrolls. The loans are potentially forgivable and the application process formally kicked off last week.
Businesses have already applied for more than $1.8 billion in loans, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday on Twitter TWTR, 6.057%. President Donald Trump said he would ask Congress for more money if the earmarked $350 billion ran out.
But banks have said they need more clarity on the rules for the program, and business owners told MarketWatch they’re confused by the loan conditions.
The National Federation of Independent Business, a trade association for small businesses, said the program has had a rocky rollout.
“We are hearing from far too many small businesses, [Friday], that they
are being shut out of the Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loan program,”
NFIB President Brad Close said in a statement. “Small businesses make up half
of our economy and employ nearly half of all workers, but this has the
potential to be the last straw for many small businesses and their employees.”
“There are still so many questions that still have to be answered and
clarified, as far as business operations,” said Holly Wade, NFIB’s director of
research. “We have basic parameters. We’re hearing from members with specific
situations and because situations are so specific, it’s difficult.”
Here’s a look at what business owners need to know about the Paycheck
Protection Program.
More
Bills become out of reach as coronavirus forces companies to close and customers to stay at home
Will Parker April 3, 2020 4:26 pm ET
About half of U.S. small businesses haven’t paid their full
rent or mortgage yet this month as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, a new
survey suggests. In the poll, conducted on Thursday and Friday by Alignable, a small business social networking company, about 30% of the more than 1,000 respondents reported making no rent or mortgage payment in April, while 20% said they had made only a partial payment.
The remaining half reported paying their entire rent on time. Only a quarter of respondents said their landlord or bank offered a reduction or deferral on what they owed. The survey was of companies with up to 50 employees, including retail, restaurant, auto-repair and other small businesses.
The preliminary findings illustrate the crisis affecting small businesses and how their troubles could set off a financial chain reaction that could inflict heavy damage on landlords and lenders across the U.S.
“I think this shows the time-sensitive need for the policy response to get liquidity in the hands of small businesses,” said Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan. “Half of all small businesses have only 15 days or less worth of cash buffers, and with shelter-in-place orders likely to persist they will need to replace lost revenue in a hurry.”
David Rosenberg April 7, 2020 12:23 PM EDT
From my lens, what we are seeing unfold this week in equities is a
classic bear market rally. It is not the start of a new bull market. This
run-up is purely speculative, nothing fundamental behind it, and we can see
that volumes have been way below average, which tells you that there is not a
very high conviction level — nor should there be.
What we have experienced in the past six weeks is not a correction. We
are in a full-fledged bear market, and these episodes can easily last a year
(or more) and there are always sharp and short rallies along the way. Indeed,
we have seen a seven per cent surge in the S&P 500 just six other times in
the past seven decades and they all occurred at times of severe stress. Two
such moves happened this cycle (March 13 and March 24), three in the 2008-09
vicious bear market and one other time, which was the surge following the
October 1987 crash.
I should add that it is always a tad strange when you get a surge like
we had on Monday and the one sector that you want to own in a recession,
utilities, soars nearly eight per cent, emerging as one of the leaders and not
even needing the helping hand of lower U.S. Treasury yields. And when the two
leading stocks are Carnival Corp. and Boeing Co., you know this is little more
than a glorified short-covering bounce.
----
I’m less bearish, but far from bullish. The recession now
seems to be short and severe, but there is no V-shaped recovery, either. Any
re-opening of the economy promises to be gradual and limited to stores and
malls. Nobody is going into big crowds, events or airports any time soon. At
the same time, we have to respect what the markets are signalling to us. We had
absolutely horrific claims and jobs reports last week. Claims were twice what
the consensus had penned in and payrolls were seven times worse. We’re going to
find out next month that the unemployment rate in April gapped up to 13 per
cent, about where it was in 1931 — the worst ever in the modern era was
November and December in 1982 at 10.8 per cent. At the same time, Jim Bullard,
head of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, came out last week with a
forecast of a 32-per-cent peak in the unemployment rate, and you’ll see that
means 47 million jobs lost when you go on the Fed bank’s website.
More
Covid-19 Corner
Today, a new use for an old
idea. British ingenuity at work. Bring on Brexit.
Australia opts for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. I seem to remember
reading something about it working best with a zinc supplement, and when given
early. They can’t be used with patients with certain heart conditions but all
doctors already know that.
Necessity
is the mother of all inventions, goes the old saying.
Modern iron lung designed to address ventilator shortage
David Szondy April
06, 2020
British
engineers are developing a modern version of the Negative Pressure Ventilator
(NPV), more popularly known as the "iron lung," to provide COVID-19
patients under the care of the NHS with a simple, inexpensive alternative to
ventilators.
One of the resources that is in critically short supply for treating
COVID-19 patients in need of respiratory support is ventilators. They help to
support breathing in people whose lungs have been heavily affected by the
virus, but these machines face a number of problems.
The most obvious difficulty is that ventilators are in short supply
across the world as health authorities scramble to secure enough to meet the
current and estimated demand as the pandemic spreads. They are also complex,
expensive, require monitoring by trained personnel, and are dangerous to use on
even healthy people because they require the patient to be intubated and
sedated, and sometimes even paralyzed.
Such Intermittent Positive Pressure Ventilators (IPPV), as they are
formally known, work by means of positive pressure. That is, they pump air or
oxygen directly into the lungs as a way to help a patient breathe. The iron
lung is essentially the opposite.
First
suggested in the 17th century, an iron lung, in its classic form, is a large,
airtight cylindrical chamber big enough to hold a person, whose head sticks out
at one end through a special collar. Inside the chamber is a diaphragm hooked
to an electric motor. As the motor turns, it operates a crank that causes the
diaphragm to expand and contract. As it does so, the volume inside the chamber
becomes larger and smaller, causing the air pressure to rise and fall. This
causes the patient's chest to expand and contract, allowing them to breathe
even if they are totally paralyzed.
Such
iron lungs were a common sight in hospitals and even private homes during the
height of the polio epidemics of the 20th century, though they have since been
superseded by more sophisticated machines. But COVID-19 might give them a new
lease on life.
The product of the University of Warwick, Marshall Aerospace &
Defence Group, the Imperial NHS Trust, the Royal National Throat Nose and Ear
hospital, and teams of citizen scientists, medical clinicians, academics,
manufacturers, and engineers, the new NPV device, called the
"exovent," has already reached the prototype stage and will be tested
at two intensive care clinics in the UK.
Unlike ventilators, the exovent doesn't require intubation and is much
simpler in design and operation. According to the consortium responsible for
its design, patients can remain awake, take medications, eat and drink, and
talk to their loved ones on the phone. In addition, the machine improves heart
efficiency by 25 percent over conventional ventilators, which can adversely
affect cardiac functions.
The developers also say that the exovent can be used in regular wards,
which frees up ICU beds for more serious cases. Enclosing only the thorax, the
machine does not use compressed air or oxygen, has only a few moving parts, and
the components are readily available. The design is also adaptable for
individual patients.
It's estimated that, once approved, 5,000 exovents could be manufactured
a week in the UK.
"We are delighted to be working with exovent to help scale up their non-invasive ventilator from prototype to volume manufacturing," says Margot James, Executive Chair, Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), University of Warwick. "Our engineers and researchers are collaborating with the exovent team on the design, engineering, component sourcing and assembly of the ventilator. I am extremely proud of the unstinting and dedicated efforts of our research team, led by Archie MacPherson at WMG, and glad that we are able to apply our expertise to this important project."
Sources: University of Warwick, Marshall Aerospace & Defence Group
Controversial drug hydroxychloroquine to be given to coronavirus patients in Australia
Infectious diseases experts urge caution amid concerns about anti-malarial’s possible side-effectsTue 7 Apr 2020 08.16 BST
A controversial anti-malaria drug will be given to
Australian Covid-19 patients in hospitals outside of clinical trials, the
federal government confirmed, after the therapeutic
goods registration requirements for two drugs were waived to allow them to
be imported to and stockpiled in Australia.
The drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, are being
explored in clinical trials around the world for their potential as a
coronavirus treatment to ease symptoms, or as a preventative drug to stop
people being overcome with the infection. Trials are exploring use of the drugs
on their own as well as in combination with others.
But clinicians have
warned that hydroxychloroquine can cause severe and even life-threatening
side-effects, and have cautioned against using it for conditions for which it
has not been tested. It is a proven treatment for malaria and for some
autoimmune conditions.
Morehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/controversial-malaria-drug-hydroxychloroquine-to-be-given-to-coronavirus-patients-in-australia
Malaria Drug Helps Virus Patients Improve, in Small Study
A group of moderately ill people were given
hydroxychloroquine, which appeared to ease their symptoms quickly, but more
research is needed.
April 1, 2020.
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helped to speed the
recovery of a small number of patients who were mildly ill from the
coronavirus, doctors in China reported this week.
Cough, fever and pneumonia went away faster, and the
disease seemed less likely to turn severe in people who received
hydroxychloroquine than in a comparison group not given the drug. The authors
of the report said that the medication was promising, but that more research
was needed to clarify how it might work in treating coronavirus disease and to
determine the best way to use it.
more
Technology Update.
With events happening
fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.
Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC
energy mankind’s future from the 21st century onwards.
World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm: Dogger Bank
Work is set to start on a new project this year that will see the construction of what will be the world's largest offshore wind farm. Soon, Britain's homes will be powered by 853 ft-tall turbines, making them the largest offshore wind farm turbines in the world. They will generate clean energy as the powerful offshore winds turn their 351 ft blades.The project that is being developed by SSE and Norway's Equinor will see a fleet of futuristic wind turbines built over three years on an artificial island in the North Sea, known as Dogger Bank, just 130 km from Yorkshire, off the UK's east coast.
A total of 4.5 million homes will be able to reap the benefits of the project's generation of clean energy, with a single turbine having the capacity to generate power for 16,000 homes.
The Dogger Bank Wind Farm Capacity
The Hornsea One project, which is set to open in 2020, will produce 1.2 GW in energy generated by turbines, making it the world's largest offshore wind farm. However, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm will overtake this once it opens in 2023 with a capacity of 3.6 GW. Rather than competing with one another, the projects will be part of a wider plan to help the UK meet its renewable energy and carbon footprint targets.The UK's Carbon Emission Targets
In 2019, a monumental step forward in the UK's efforts to become carbon neutral was achieved, with statistics revealing that more of the country's energy was produced by renewable sources than it was fossil fuels in the third quarter of 2019. The UK government has set a target to reduce all emissions to "net zero" by 2050.Of the country's renewable energy sources, wind power is currently the most significant, with 20% of the UK's total electricity being generated by this sector. The increase in wind power capacity over recent years has been attributed as a significant cause of the country being able to use more renewables than fossil fuels.
How Will the Dogger Bank Project Impact the UK's Renewable Energy Targets?
The opening of Dogger Bank will significantly increase the UK's renewable energy capacity further and help the country to make the switch to renewables by ensuring renewable energy production is more efficient and cost-effective than fossil fuels.
More
Alan Schwartz, CEO Bear Stearns, March 12, 2008.
Bust March 16, 2008.
The Monthly Coppock Indicators finished March
DJIA: 21,917 +45 Down. NASDAQ: 7,700 +149 Down.
SP500: 2,585 +38 Down.
The NASDAQ and S&P have
joined the DJIA in down. All three monthly slow indexes have collapsed.
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