Coronavirus - Macro Investment Aspects Only

[ursaminortaur]

Most firms' insurance will not cover them for Covid-19 and the FCA has stated that they will not intervene on their behalf.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/15/most-uk-firms-do-not-have-coronavirus-coverage-insurance-industry-told

Most UK businesses will not be eligible for insurance payouts over the Covid-19 lockdown, the City watchdog has warned, adding that it was not prepared to intervene on their behalf.

In an open letter to insurance chief executives on Wednesday, the Financial Conduct Authority said it found that most claimants on business interruption policies did not have the right coverage to warrant a payout during a pandemic.

“Based on our conversations with the industry to date, our estimate is that most policies have basic cover, do not cover pandemics and therefore would have no obligation to pay out in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the FCA’s interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard, said.

[colin]

If this rise in rates of c19 in China is true it is suggestive that hopes of early lifting of restrictions will be dissapointed:

https://twitter.com/standardnews/status ... 74849?s=20

But on a more positive note, a potential Chinese vaccine has been approved for trials:

https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1 ... 91808?s=20

hat tip to Lord Sugar for links

These kinds of conflicting headlines may be part of the reason for the rise in the price of gold, perhaps heading to all time highs:

https://twitter.com/0_ody/status/124998 ... 49537?s=20

Regards,

You are aware that most of the 'new' Chinese cases are nationals returning from abroad?

[odysseus2000]

If this rise in rates of c19 in China is true it is suggestive that hopes of early lifting of restrictions will be dissapointed:

https://twitter.com/standardnews/status ... 74849?s=20

But on a more positive note, a potential Chinese vaccine has been approved for trials:

https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1 ... 91808?s=20

hat tip to Lord Sugar for links

These kinds of conflicting headlines may be part of the reason for the rise in the price of gold, perhaps heading to all time highs:

https://twitter.com/0_ody/status/124998 ... 49537?s=20

Regards,

You are aware that most of the 'new' Chinese cases are nationals returning from abroad?

From what I hear from Chinese contacts in Shenzhen, any Chinese returning after to do in to quarantine whether with elevated temps or not in case of asymptomatic carrier. As far as I know the new Chinese cases are from Chinese infections.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Most firms' insurance will not cover them for Covid-19 and the FCA has stated that they will not intervene on their behalf.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/apr/15/most-uk-firms-do-not-have-coronavirus-coverage-insurance-industry-told

Most UK businesses will not be eligible for insurance payouts over the Covid-19 lockdown, the City watchdog has warned, adding that it was not prepared to intervene on their behalf.

In an open letter to insurance chief executives on Wednesday, the Financial Conduct Authority said it found that most claimants on business interruption policies did not have the right coverage to warrant a payout during a pandemic.

“Based on our conversations with the industry to date, our estimate is that most policies have basic cover, do not cover pandemics and therefore would have no obligation to pay out in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic,” the FCA’s interim chief executive, Christopher Woolard, said.

As Cynics would say: "Ha Ha, usual thing with insurance, you are covered for everything except stuff that might really hurt insurance company profits and the lobbyist money going into the watchdogs."

Regards,

[colin]

If this rise in rates of c19 in China is true it is suggestive that hopes of early lifting of restrictions will be dissapointed:

https://twitter.com/standardnews/status ... 74849?s=20

But on a more positive note, a potential Chinese vaccine has been approved for trials:

https://twitter.com/ChinaDaily/status/1 ... 91808?s=20

hat tip to Lord Sugar for links

These kinds of conflicting headlines may be part of the reason for the rise in the price of gold, perhaps heading to all time highs:

https://twitter.com/0_ody/status/124998 ... 49537?s=20

Regards,

You are aware that most of the 'new' Chinese cases are nationals returning from abroad?

From what I hear from Chinese contacts in Shenzhen, any Chinese returning after to do in to quarantine whether with elevated temps or not in case of asymptomatic carrier. As far as I know the new Chinese cases are from Chinese infections.

Regards,

It has been widely reported in the UK press that the majority of new Coronovirus cases in China come from nationals returning from outside China. Unless you can supply some evidence to the contrary then 'as far as you know ' is not good enough.

[Wuffle]

I find it helpful to consider the world and then apply it to China.
The global squabble over limited health care product amongst the wealthy nations indicates there is not enough. Poor countries will have next to nothing and this will hang about there indefinitely.
China has millions of dirt poor still.
The official line doesn't wash on that basis.
There will never be definitive proof thereof but common sense goes a long way.

W.

[odysseus2000]

Colin
It has been widely reported in the UK press that the majority of new Coronovirus cases in China come from nationals returning from outside China. Unless you can supply some evidence to the contrary then 'as far as you know ' is not good enough.

You are taking widely reported in the UK press as gospel? The press are currently having a blame game on China which may be right, don't know, but in general I do not put much weight on what the UK press say having studied what they say and reality for many years I have found the UK media to be worse than useless for information, in that they regularly get reality wrong. However, they are quite good as a source for trends that one can play if one is quick and acts knowing that the underlying premise is likely wrong.

I can only tell you what the Chinese people I know have told me.

From a macro economic perspective whether c19 infection protects some one from another infection or not is of crucial importance but as of yet the data from various nations is not consistent which leads to various hypothesis. One is that everyone is telling lies, another that having c19 does not always produce anti-bodies to it,... and many many more with remarkable orthogonality that means many must be false or there is something very complicated about this virus and human health.

There is currently no consistency in anything connected to c19. Trump has defunded the WHO and is again at loggerhead with them. The quality of the information coming out from all governments is poor and this is having a murderous effect on trying to determine the macro economic impact and influences of c19 on worker exposure, return to work schedules and a whole host of other things that make the game of macro economics due to c19 pure guessing as of now.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

I find it helpful to consider the world and then apply it to China.
The global squabble over limited health care product amongst the wealthy nations indicates there is not enough. Poor countries will have next to nothing and this will hang about there indefinitely.
China has millions of dirt poor still.
The official line doesn't wash on that basis.
There will never be definitive proof thereof but common sense goes a long way.

W.

This is quite a common theme I come across and either c19 has be special, unlike every preceding virus or human bodies will find ways of protecting themselves as as happened in all the previous pandemics when there was none of the sophisticated health stuff that we have now. E.g. Spanish flu did not linger indefinitely to re-emerge over and over. It died out and/or humans became immune.

As far as I can tell c19 ought to do the same. If it is somehow special and will not die out then all the macro economic predictions etc are hopelessly
wrong.

Regards,

[PeterGray]

I agree that there is no reason to think that Covid 19 represents something that is fundamentally unlike anything that has come before. The death toll is unlikely to reach that of Spanish Flu, at least in the developed parts of the world. But that does not mean it will not be around, likely in decreasing intensity for sometime to come, and the economic damage over the next few years is likely to be significant.

One factor that has changed immensley over the past decades is the degree of interconnectedness, and travel (something interestingly at least partly in common with 1918, with hundreds of thousands on the move). That means things like Covid spread far more quickly. I think that is an area where we will have to see changes - it's quite remarkable that people are still arriving in UK airports and passing absolutely no health screening or quarantine, even in the midst of a pandemic. I'm not saying screening will need to become standard, but there will have to be systems that can quickly be put in place during future events.

[JamesMuenchen]

EU27 new car registrations: mullered.
https://www.acea.be/press-releases/arti ... 1-in-march
Passenger car registrations: -25.6% first quarter of 2020; -55.1% in March

[ursaminortaur]

I find it helpful to consider the world and then apply it to China.
The global squabble over limited health care product amongst the wealthy nations indicates there is not enough. Poor countries will have next to nothing and this will hang about there indefinitely.
China has millions of dirt poor still.
The official line doesn't wash on that basis.
There will never be definitive proof thereof but common sense goes a long way.

W.

This is quite a common theme I come across and either c19 has be special, unlike every preceding virus or human bodies will find ways of protecting themselves as as happened in all the previous pandemics when there was none of the sophisticated health stuff that we have now. E.g. Spanish flu did not linger indefinitely to re-emerge over and over. It died out and/or humans became immune.

As far as I can tell c19 ought to do the same. If it is somehow special and will not die out then all the macro economic predictions etc are hopelessly
wrong.

Regards,

There have been many deadly viruses which humanity just had to live with until modern vaccination.

Smallpox historically had an R0 of 3.5-6 and a fatality rate of 30% for the more common form

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/158/2/110/323323

Gani and Leach (8, 9) have recently evaluated historical smallpox data and estimated values of 3.5–6 for the basic reproduction number R0 of smallpox (after discounting for hospital-associated cases). This means that each case would infect 3.5–6 other people on average if the population were completely susceptible.

https://www.who.int/biologicals/vaccines/smallpox/en/

Two forms of the disease are recognized, variola minor with a mortality rate of approximately 1%, and the more common variola major with a mortality rate of 30%.

[colin]

Colin
It has been widely reported in the UK press that the majority of new Coronovirus cases in China come from nationals returning from outside China. Unless you can supply some evidence to the contrary then 'as far as you know ' is not good enough.

You are taking widely reported in the UK press as gospel? The press are currently having a blame game on China which may be right, don't know, but in general I do not put much weight on what the UK press say having studied what they say and reality for many years I have found the UK media to be worse than useless for information, in that they regularly get reality wrong. However, they are quite good as a source for trends that one can play if one is quick and acts knowing that the underlying premise is likely wrong.

I can only tell you what the Chinese people I know have told me.

From a macro economic perspective whether c19 infection protects some one from another infection or not is of crucial importance but as of yet the data from various nations is not consistent which leads to various hypothesis. One is that everyone is telling lies, another that having c19 does not always produce anti-bodies to it,... and many many more with remarkable orthogonality that means many must be false or there is something very complicated about this virus and human health.

There is currently no consistency in anything connected to c19. Trump has defunded the WHO and is again at loggerhead with them. The quality of the information coming out from all governments is poor and this is having a murderous effect on trying to determine the macro economic impact and influences of c19 on worker exposure, return to work schedules and a whole host of other things that make the game of macro economics due to c19 pure guessing as of now.

Regards,

There are western journalists in China , they may not be able to travel as freely as they would like but keeping a conspiracy to hide lock downs and towns full of sick people quiet is likely to be as succesful as hiding Yughur detention/re-education centers was, I certainly trust journalists more than I trust rumour mongers on the internet. But any way it seems academic now as there are enough new cases on the Russian border for a second Coronovirus wave as migrants from there return home, funny your friends did not report that?

[odysseus2000]

I agree that there is no reason to think that Covid 19 represents something that is fundamentally unlike anything that has come before. The death toll is unlikely to reach that of Spanish Flu, at least in the developed parts of the world. But that does not mean it will not be around, likely in decreasing intensity for sometime to come, and the economic damage over the next few years is likely to be significant.

One factor that has changed immensley over the past decades is the degree of interconnectedness, and travel (something interestingly at least partly in common with 1918, with hundreds of thousands on the move). That means things like Covid spread far more quickly. I think that is an area where we will have to see changes - it's quite remarkable that people are still arriving in UK airports and passing absolutely no health screening or quarantine, even in the midst of a pandemic. I'm not saying screening will need to become standard, but there will have to be systems that can quickly be put in place during future events.

The general information I am getting is that screening is very desirable, but that so far the tests are not accurate enough, fast enough or of sufficient low cost to be practical. That has caused a lot of interest in temperature measurement particularly in South Korea and China, but so far it is not popular here, being considered too limited in both selectivity (e.g. flu or c19) and in not being any use for asymptomatic. Still imho better than nothing. For the moment as there are no tests or instruments, there seems to be a potential move to require all air travels to wear masks for the duration of their time past the gates to leaving customs at the destination. How practical this might be I wonder, but maybe better than nothing. Others have suggested that only folk who have anti-bodies to c19 will be allowed to fly which also has practical implications.

For now the airlines seem to be seen as sufficiently important that they are allowed to fly and have access to low interest government loans.

There are huge commercial opportunities here for any company that can come up with a practical test. I also wonder what effects the current situation may have on travel insurance premiums and on the hotel and accommodation industries. If there is a vaccine then things can come back to normal quickly, but if not there are likely long term wounds to the entire travel industry that may take a very long time, if ever, to heal.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

I find it helpful to consider the world and then apply it to China.
The global squabble over limited health care product amongst the wealthy nations indicates there is not enough. Poor countries will have next to nothing and this will hang about there indefinitely.
China has millions of dirt poor still.
The official line doesn't wash on that basis.
There will never be definitive proof thereof but common sense goes a long way.

W.

This is quite a common theme I come across and either c19 has be special, unlike every preceding virus or human bodies will find ways of protecting themselves as as happened in all the previous pandemics when there was none of the sophisticated health stuff that we have now. E.g. Spanish flu did not linger indefinitely to re-emerge over and over. It died out and/or humans became immune.

As far as I can tell c19 ought to do the same. If it is somehow special and will not die out then all the macro economic predictions etc are hopelessly
wrong.

Regards,

There have been many deadly viruses which humanity just had to live with until modern vaccination.

Smallpox historically had an R0 of 3.5-6 and a fatality rate of 30% for the more common form

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/158/2/110/323323

Gani and Leach (8, 9) have recently evaluated historical smallpox data and estimated values of 3.5–6 for the basic reproduction number R0 of smallpox (after discounting for hospital-associated cases). This means that each case would infect 3.5–6 other people on average if the population were completely susceptible.

https://www.who.int/biologicals/vaccines/smallpox/en/

Two forms of the disease are recognized, variola minor with a mortality rate of approximately 1%, and the more common variola major with a mortality rate of 30%.

Yes we may have to learn as a species to live with c19 if it does turn out to be special in ways that are not seen in other virus.

The positives are that we as a species have lived with murderous virus before and so presumably if we have to we will find ways of doing so again.

Regards,

[ursaminortaur]

This is quite a common theme I come across and either c19 has be special, unlike every preceding virus or human bodies will find ways of protecting themselves as as happened in all the previous pandemics when there was none of the sophisticated health stuff that we have now. E.g. Spanish flu did not linger indefinitely to re-emerge over and over. It died out and/or humans became immune.

As far as I can tell c19 ought to do the same. If it is somehow special and will not die out then all the macro economic predictions etc are hopelessly
wrong.

Regards,

There have been many deadly viruses which humanity just had to live with until modern vaccination.

Smallpox historically had an R0 of 3.5-6 and a fatality rate of 30% for the more common form

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/158/2/110/323323

Gani and Leach (8, 9) have recently evaluated historical smallpox data and estimated values of 3.5–6 for the basic reproduction number R0 of smallpox (after discounting for hospital-associated cases). This means that each case would infect 3.5–6 other people on average if the population were completely susceptible.

https://www.who.int/biologicals/vaccines/smallpox/en/

Two forms of the disease are recognized, variola minor with a mortality rate of approximately 1%, and the more common variola major with a mortality rate of 30%.

Yes we may have to learn as a species to live with c19 if it does turn out to be special in ways that are not seen in other virus.

The positives are that we as a species have lived with murderous virus before and so presumably if we have to we will find ways of doing so again.

Regards,

The point I was trying to make is that a virus with a high mortality rate and reasonably high infection rate (R0) which continues to infect people for centuries is actually nothing unusual. Hopefully as with smallpox and the many other such historic viruses there will be a successful vaccine eventually developed for SARS-CoV-2 which will deal with it (or if not a vaccine antiviral treatments which will make it less deadly).

With luck a vaccine will be developed quickly and this pandemic will act as a wake-up call leading to greater research on viruses, antivirals, how to develop vaccines quicker and more efficiently, as well as new antibiotics (since we already know that bacterial resistance is rapidly depleting that armoury).

[colin]

There have been many deadly viruses which humanity just had to live with until modern vaccination.

Smallpox historically had an R0 of 3.5-6 and a fatality rate of 30% for the more common form

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/158/2/110/323323

Gani and Leach (8, 9) have recently evaluated historical smallpox data and estimated values of 3.5–6 for the basic reproduction number R0 of smallpox (after discounting for hospital-associated cases). This means that each case would infect 3.5–6 other people on average if the population were completely susceptible.

https://www.who.int/biologicals/vaccines/smallpox/en/

Two forms of the disease are recognized, variola minor with a mortality rate of approximately 1%, and the more common variola major with a mortality rate of 30%.

Yes we may have to learn as a species to live with c19 if it does turn out to be special in ways that are not seen in other virus.

The positives are that we as a species have lived with murderous virus before and so presumably if we have to we will find ways of doing so again.

Regards,

The point I was trying to make is that a virus with a high mortality rate and reasonably high infection rate (R0) which continues to infect people for centuries is actually nothing unusual. Hopefully as with smallpox and the many other such historic viruses there will be a successful vaccine eventually developed for SARS-CoV-2 which will deal with it (or if not a vaccine antiviral treatments which will make it less deadly).

With luck a vaccine will be developed quickly and this pandemic will act as a wake-up call leading to greater research on viruses, antivirals, how to develop vaccines quicker and more efficiently, as well as new antibiotics (since we already know that bacterial resistance is rapidly depleting that armoury).

There are no guarantees, we still do not have a vaccine against HIV infection.

[JamesMuenchen]

EU27 new car registrations: mullered.
https://www.acea.be/press-releases/arti ... 1-in-march
Passenger car registrations: -25.6% first quarter of 2020; -55.1% in March

Fear of an Impending Car-Price Collapse Grips Auto Industry
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... o-industry
Used-vehicle auctions are for now virtually paralyzed, much like the rest of the economy. The grave concern market watchers have is that vehicles already are starting to pile up at places where buyers and sellers make and take bids on cars and trucks -- and that this imbalance will last for months.

If that fear is realized and prices plummet, it will be detrimental to automakers and their in-house lending units, which likely will have to write down the value of lease contracts that had assumed vehicles would retain greater value. Rental-car companies also will get less money from selling down their fleet of vehicles, which are sitting idle amid a global pandemic that’s been catastrophic for travel.

[GoSeigen]

Yes we may have to learn as a species to live with c19 if it does turn out to be special in ways that are not seen in other virus.

The positives are that we as a species have lived with murderous virus before and so presumably if we have to we will find ways of doing so again.

Viruses. Murderous sodomising raping evil cannibalising viruses.

GS

[ursaminortaur]

Yes we may have to learn as a species to live with c19 if it does turn out to be special in ways that are not seen in other virus.

The positives are that we as a species have lived with murderous virus before and so presumably if we have to we will find ways of doing so again.

Viruses. Murderous sodomising raping evil cannibalising viruses.

GS

sodomising ? Well I suppose you could catch SARS-CoV-2 from a toilet seat - like any other surface if someone had coughed on it recently enough

I'm not sure about a virus being cannibalistic though.

[odysseus2000]

How to profit off c19:

https://twitter.com/DrLeahTotton/status ... 28544?s=20

Regards,