The Lemon Fool

I couldn't find a thread on this.

So far stockmarkets seem unperturbed by the virus. I'm not concerned that we are all doomed, but I am concerned that a few of my share prices may plummet if the disease spreads far and wide.

Epidemic graphs & data:
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... 7b48e9ecf6
So far, the proportion of cases outside China is pleasingly small!

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02 ... o-pandemic
"I would be really shocked if in 2 or 3 weeks there wasn’t ongoing transmission with hundreds of cases in several countries on several continents."

So if it spreads, what might we see? Probably a vaccine will be available in the late summer, though in what quantities I don't know, and we have the benefits of tests that were never available for say the 1918 'flu pandemic. So we have lots of tools to help us. Reports that the virus may spread before symptoms appear may apparently be wrong (the woman when interviewed said yes, she did have symptons), and that's good.

But I imagine that all sorts of stocks might plummet in panic - pubs, bars, companies relying on Chinese trade in one way or another. Would countries outside China impose restrictions on gatherings and travel if it spreads? Maybe people will quarantine themselves away. Stockmarkets would surely fall. Whether these falls might be really warranted economically I cannot say, but there's a non-zero risk it may happen.

Is anyone selling off in case?

For the moment markets don't care about it.

The threatened long term shut down of Chinese manufacturing seems to have abated and the number of deaths has not gone wildly up.

It could return to be a problem, but for now equity markets have moved on and are no longer focused on it. IGindex have taken the image of the two masked Chinese people off their web site and went to Tesla boom which greatly eclipsed the virus stories in the media and likely something else in the morning.

For now it is yesterdays news and the folk who did best were those who bought the dip.

Regards,

Is anyone selling off in case?

I'm transferring a group personal pension into my SIPP. I would have had to have sold anyway but was going to wait until the summer when the markets are usually quieter. I brought forward that decision because of Coronavirus and sold last week instead.

I don't trust the figures coming out of China. I also wonder why, if this is no problem, the Chinese government have put hundreds of millions into virtual house arrest?

I think this is being downplayed deliberately so as not to cause panic. The official mortality rate is 2% and I hear spokesperson after spokesperson saying how this isn't bad but it is five times the mortality rate of seasonal flu. It's a similar mortality rate to the pandemic that followed WW1.

Tomorrow is meant to be the end of the extended Chinese New Year in Beijing. If this happens as scheduled, cases of the virus will surge. I'm not sure we will hear about them though.

As the virus spreads internationally we will start to get more trustworthy mortality rate and infection rate figures.

I have extracted a copy of the global figures from WHO. Having looked at them. I dont think the chinese infection figures are statistically reliable. The figures as to deaths and severe cases will be more reliable and these again are more china orientated. Obviously shutting down activity in China will have an economic impact, but whether there will be anything similar outside China is unclear. I think the problem with this virus is that asymptomatic carriers can infect others. That makes it hard to control.

There may be a wider need, therefore to reduce opportunities for infection which would mean a reduction in travel, but we wont know for a month or so if that is needed or not. I would expect some carriers outside China to be undetected as yet. How many is unclear.

Yes indeed. The Japanese are saying that at least 50% of infections occur from asymptomatic carriers.

If true, this means there is very little chance of stopping it, I reckon.

The greater the number of infections the more the virus will mutate.

The best outcome might be if the virus mutates so that the incubation period reduces. That will make it easier to stop.

sackofspuds wrote:If true, this means there is very little chance of stopping it, I reckon.

I don't think that we can know this as yet. It really depends upon how easy it is to catch the infection.

This is a useful story as it gives an idea about onward transmission
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... oronavirus

However, we don't know how many more there are like this were as yet the authorities are unaware of the situation.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... he-iceberg

The authorities (WHO) confirm that we don't really know as yet how many cases there are globally.

One thing we do know is that there are "super spreaders". Won't take many of them to spread it far and wide.

UK declares Coronavirus serious threat to public health:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chin ... ce=twitter

Shorts now have everything in their favour to take markets down on fear. It will be interesting to see if they can, but bigger moves likely linked to numbers reported sick & killed.

Regards,

Yes, apparently that action was taken because someone in quarantine was threatening to walk out. They had all signed a contract agreeing to the quarantine but he was going to break it and the government had no powers to forcibly detain him.

Chinese car manufacturers begin to produce face masks:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ow-organic

Regards,

Here's another interesting view of the data:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

There's evidence that China is maybe containing the spread as the rate of increases in cases slows:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... rus-cases/

Reported cases must be limited by the rate at which tests can be conducted, and whether they are testing the right groups of people.

Indonesia still reports zero cases, despite modelling of air travel etc predicting that they 'should' have found about 10 cases by now. I suspect this is now the biggest risk - that some country, either Indonesia or elsewhere, has an undetected pocket of infection.

There's an interesting discussion of what the mortality rate might be here, and different ways of etimating it:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... e/#correct

Let's not forget that ordinary 'flu kills 250-500,000 people every year and the world carries on ok, even though we'd prefer not to have it

CDC faq on Coronavirus:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/faq.html

Regards,

Currently the Coronavirus seems most dangerous to the older members of the population. This is in stark contrast to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919 which predominantly killed young people in the prime of life by causing their immune system to over react:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-t ... 2020-01-21

Regards,

odysseus2000 wrote:Currently the Coronavirus seems most dangerous to the older members of the population. This is in stark contrast to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919 which predominantly killed young people in the prime of life by causing their immune system to over react:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-t ... 2020-01-21

Regards,

Will those who have the existing annual flu vaccine have some protection?

As far as I can tell the protection afforded by the flu vaccine will not be effective against Corona and for now, as I understand it, there is no vaccine for Corona but attempts to make one are ongoing, see bottom of:

https://www.livescience.com/new-coronav ... h-flu.html

Regards,

Midsmartin wrote:There's evidence that China is maybe containing the spread as the rate of increases in cases slows:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... rus-cases/

It strikes me that people in China who have the virus, but do not require admission to hospital are not being tested or hence counted.

What is relevant about the cruise ship is that there are a clearly defined group of contacts on the ship. With an asymptomatic carrier the group of contacts and their contacts is less defined and potentially substantially larger.

Charts seem to indicate that we may be reaching some sort of plateau in China in the coming weeks -

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQivezQU0AAlSrM?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

New cases outside of Hubei Province continue to fall -

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EQivezHUUAEEHui?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Source - National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China (yeah, I know, but still....)

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Recovery rate improving:

https://twitter.com/FirstSquawk/status/ ... 86944?s=20

Regards,

Today's news that the number of cases in China exploded by 14,840, resulting in a total of 48,206 cases, shows how we cannot trust any of the numbers coming out of China.

Heck, few believe the numbers coming out of AIM listed Chinese companies. Why would you trust these Covid-19 numbers?

Yes, I know the explosion in cases was down to definitions.

I would be looking at the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan. Sadly those 3,700 passengers and crew are involuntary members of a public health experiment. There are 175 infections and counting on that ship (4.7%). The thing is, they haven't tested everyone.

China is now in a cleft stick. Many of its factories are shut down. Its economy is going to suffer big time. I reckon it has already lost the battle against the virus.

It will have to declare soon that it has things under control, stop the virtual house arrest of millions and get everyone back to work.

It will then switch resources to concentrate on treating those who are infected.

Of course, once China gives up trying to stop the virus spreading it is pretty much guaranteed to be a global pandemic.

This all may sound alarmist but that's the way I see it.

I can't see markets just keeping going up once it gets to that stage but I may be wrong. Everyone may just shrug their shoulders.

The basic question remains. Why, if Covid-19 is nothing to worry about, did China put millions under virtual house arrest?