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The global economy won't bounce back soon

Daniel Lacalle
Mises Institute
Thu, 19 Mar 2020 12:00 UTC
world economy
In February, the general consensus between large investment banks and supranational entities was that there would be a one-time hit to GDP in the first quarter due to the impact of the coronavirus, followed by a stronger, V-shaped recovery. The IMF expected a modest correction of global GDP of 0.1 percent, and the largest cut on estimates for 2020 growth was 0.4 percent.

Those days are gone.

The latest round of global growth revisions includes a slash of growth estimates for the first and second quarters and a very modest recovery in the third and fourth. Average GDP estimates are now down 0.7 percent, and JP Morgan expects the eurozone to enter a deep recession in the next two quarters (-1.8 percent and -3.3 percent in the first and second quarters), followed by a very poor recovery that would still leave the full-year 2020 estimate in contraction. The investment bank also assumes US slumps of 2 percent and 3 percent, respectively, but a modest full-year growth. Capital Economics estimates a hit to the US economy for the full year that would cut 0.8 percent off previous estimates though still predicting growth, but a larger impact on the eurozone, with full-year 2020 growth at an avergae of -1.2 percent, led by a -2 percent prediction for Italy. This, unfortunately, looks like just the beginning of a downgrade cycle that adds to the issue of an economy that was already slowing in 2019.

Comment: As noted above, the economic situation was dire prior to the coronavirus hysteria:

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People 2

Britain's middle class are about to discover the cruelty of its benefits system

Polly Toynbee
The Guardian
Tue, 24 Mar 2020 06:00 UTC
universal credit
© Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images
'People confronting universal credit's obstacles may join the half who find themselves propelled to local food banks.'
Millions of people are about to discover something they didn't know about British life. There is no longer a safety net. People who have paid tax and national insurance for years and never been near the social security system will be turning to it in their hour of need; yet far too late, like trapeze artists falling through the air, they will find that the net beneath them has been lowered dangerously close to the ground and is badly torn.

If these people once believed relentlessly misleading tabloid tales of benefit scroungers, they will have a rude awakening. They will find that when Iain Duncan Smith turned the screw on social security in 2012, he was right to warn claimants: "This is not an easy life any more, chum." As if it ever was.

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has done well to honour 80% of wages for those "furloughed" from shut-down businesses - up to £2,500 a month. No one knows how many that covers and at what cost, but it was a macroeconomic necessity. One worry is the incapacity of the HMRC workforce, with 15,600 staff cut and 157 local offices with local knowledge closed: can they pay the wage subsidy to companies in time to save them? Many firms could still close, sending millions into unemployment.

Comment: Like the crash of 2008, the (near) collapse of 2020 may serve as a revelation to a significant proportion of those who, despite all the signs, were unwilling to face facts about the sorry state of the society they were living in:

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Hourglass

For a generation that's forgotten how to spend time alone, lockdown will be tough - psychologists

Pratibha Sharma
Sputnik
Thu, 26 Mar 2020 09:44 UTC
lockdown coronavirus
© REUTERS / Rupak De Chowdhuri
Stress is an intrinsic characteristic of the 21st century and so is the hyper social engagement to seek respite from it. With life on halt due to the lockdown, mental health professionals are seeing a sharp increase in anxiety and depression related queries as a result of limited social activities.

Eerie silence on streets, deserted clubs devoid of heart throbbing music and dead office spaces - sights like these are going to be the new normal for Indians during this unprecedented countrywide lockdown in response to the outbreak of the World Health Organization-declared coronavirus pandemic.

Psychologists point out that they have seen an increase in the number of queries from people who are quarantined, families that are spending more time together and parents who are worried about their kids holed up at home.

Comment: Perhaps a silver-lining to the lockdown is that some people, even if a tiny minority, might actually become reacquainted with themselves, being able to spend time alone and actually do some introspection. It may be a long shot, but forced isolation may possibly be an opportunity for growth.

See also:

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Attention

Milan Italy was overwhelmed with viral lung infections as recently as 2018 without feeding a global hysteria

Simona Ravizza
Anti-empire
Thu, 26 Mar 2020 10:25 UTC
How unusual is it for a certain number of localities world-wide to get swamped during the flu season? Apparently not that unusual at all
mass hysteria

Why didn’t we put the world under lockdown to flatten the curve in 2017-18?


Editor's note: This is a question I keep asking, how unusual is it for a few localities in the world to have their intensive care capacities swamped with severe lower respiratory infection cases during the flu season? We are supposed to think hospitals in a few cities in the world becoming swamped in this way is highly irregular and a sign COVID-19 is a threat like no other but is that really true? Is it the case hospitals never get swamped, or is it the case the media and thus the public never before paid much attention?

One thing that is clear is that SARS-CoV-2 is a mild virus that is extremely unlikely to kill you if you become infected (see 1,2,3). Another thing which is clear is that there is no excess mortality to indicate this influenza-pneumonia-coronavirus season has been particularly bad and that SARS-CoV-2 is, therefore, killing more people than whatever coronavirus it mutated from (see 1,2). Its only remaining claim to be a greater threat than what we deal with every year without governments subjecting us to house arrest is that it has the ability to overwhelm hospitals and force doctors to ration care as is happening now in Milan and happened before in Wuhan. Well here follows a (machine-translated) report from 2018 which makes it clear the intensive care capacity of a modern European metropolis was overwhelmed just two years ago — that metropolis just happens to be Milan.

This particular swamping may not have been quite as severe, but that's not the point. The point is that if we can find a previous less severe case of swamping even for Milan itself it would indicate that globally they are not at all unusual.
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Newspaper

Wall Street Journal: Is the coronavirus as deadly as they say?

Eran Bendavid and Jay Bhattacharya
Wall Street Journal
Tue, 24 Mar 2020 18:21 UTC
emergency room line Brooklyn
© Andrew kelly/Reuters
A line at an emergency room in Brooklyn, N.Y., March 19.
Current estimates about the Covid-19 fatality rate may be too high by orders of magnitude.

If it's true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there's little evidence to confirm that premise — and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.

Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate — 2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases.

Comment: As more and more mainstream publications are publishing articles questioning the mainstream narrative on the coronavirus, cracks start to appear in the manufactured consensus. How long will they be able to keep the population confined to their houses in the face of growing doubt?

See also:

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Brick Wall

Peter Hitchens: Is shutting down Britain - with unprecedented curbs on ancient liberties - really the best answer?

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
Sun, 22 Mar 2020 01:53 UTC
peter hitchens
Some years ago I had the very good luck to fall into the hands of a totally useless doctor. It was hell, and nearly worse than that, but it taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. He was charming, grey-haired, smooth and beautifully dressed. He was standing in for my usual GP, a shabbier, more abrasive man.

I went to him with a troubling, persistent pain in a tender place. He prescribed an antibiotic. Days passed. It did not work. The pain grew worse. He declared that in that case I needed surgery, and the specialist to whom he sent me agreed with barely a glance. I was on the conveyor belt to the operating table.

In those days I believed, as so many do, in the medical profession. I was awed by their qualifications. Yet the prospect of a rather nasty operation filled me with gloom and doubt. As I waited miserably for the anaesthetist in the huge London hospital to which I had been sent, a new doctor appeared. I braced myself for another session of being asked 'Does this hurt?' and replying, between clenched teeth, that yes it blinking well did. But this third man was different. He did not ask me pointlessly if it hurt. He knew it did. He was, crucially, a thinking man who did not take for granted what he was told.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Coulter: How do we flatten the curve on panic?

Ann Coulter
Breitbart
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 08:09 UTC
flat curve
If, as the evidence suggests, the Chinese virus is enormously dangerous to people with certain medical conditions and those over 70 years old, but a much smaller danger to those under 70, then shutting down the entire country indefinitely is probably a bad idea.

But even when the time is right — by Easter, June or the fall — there will be no one to stop the quarantine because the media will continue to hype every coronavirus death, as if these are the only deaths that count and the only deaths that were preventable.

What mayor, governor or president will be willing to take the blame for causing a coronavirus death?

We'll get no BREAKING NEWS alerts for the regular flu deaths (so far this season, more than 23,000, compared to 533 from the coronavirus).

Nor for the more than 3,000 people who die every day of heart disease or cancer. No alerts for the hundreds who die each day from car accidents, illegal aliens and suicide.

Only coronavirus deaths are considered newsworthy.

Comment: See also:

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Red Pill

Interview with Professor Didier Raoult on the coronavirus


The Saker
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 02:16 UTC
Didier Raoult

Didier Raoult
Professor Raoult is a leading expert on infectious diseases. He is confident he has a cure for Covid 19, which he is using in his Marseille hospital. He is having trouble getting the French health authorities to take him seriously. Despite his international renown he does not get on too well with the Parisian medical establishment. And he has long hair. Oh dear... Read on: —

[Translation Robert Harneis - The article in French is here]

LE PARISIEN - The government has authorized a large scale clinical trial to test the effect of Chloroquine on Coronavirus. Is having got that to happen important for you?

DIDIER RAOULT - No, I couldn't care less. I think there are people living on the Moon and who contrast controlled trials for Aids with trials for a new infectious disease. Like any other doctor, once a treatment has been shown to be effective, I find it immoral not to use it. It is as simple as that.
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Attention

New Zealand police can now enter homes to look for 'people gathering'

Thomas Manch
Stuff
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 21:39 UTC
Ponsonby Road, New Zealand
© JASON DORDAY/STUFF
Ponsonby Rd on the first day of the lockdown in New Zealand.
Police officers now have the power to enter homes to enforce self-isolation rules.

New Zealand entered a four-week lockdown to break the transmission of coronavirus on Thursday. Overnight, police officers have pulled over people who were breaking the self-isolation order — apparently unaware it was in place.

Police Commissioner Mike Bush, in a series of radio and TV interviews on Thursday morning, reiterated people will initially see the "friendly face" of police during the lockdown.

"But we'll be ensuring people will comply because if they don't, people will die," Bush said on RNZ.

He said police already had to educate people on the self-isolation order overnight, and would continue this informative approach unless people intentionally flout the rules.
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Cell Phone

UK government's WhatsApp 'chatbot' service aimed at countering Covid-19 'misinformation' suffers launch malfunction


RT
Wed, 25 Mar 2020 03:19 UTC
coronavirus
© REUTERS / Dado Ruvic/ Illustration
The launch of the UK government's new WhatsApp 'chatbot' service designed to "combat the spread of coronavirus misinformation" got off to an embarrassing start, with claims that it "didn't seem to work."

Billed as a simple, free way to receive official government advice on the Covid-19 outbreak through the popular chat app - owned by Facebook - it was designed to help ensure that people stay at home and to relieve pressure on the National Health Service.

However, the Guardian's media editor Jim Waterson reported on social media that the service had encountered operational issues on Wednesday - launch day.
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