Mar 242020
 
 March 24, 2020  Posted by at 7:41 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,


James Proudfoot Sun on a House, Dieppe 1937

 

 

Famous last words?!

“I would love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said in an interview Tuesday with Fox News. “I would love to have it opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” “A lot of people agree with me. Our country is not built to built to shut down. Our people are full of vim and vigor and energy. They don’t want to be locked into a house or an apartment, it’s not for our country”

Note that Trump covered himself by framing it as “I would love to…” Still, Easter is April 12, 19 days from now. I think the US is highly unlikely to even have reached its peak in infections by then, and the country will be awash in misery, sickness, death and heartbreaking stories, not uplifting ones of a roaring economy.

The US death toll is still very low compared to its active cases, but that is because the epidemic in the country is relatively new, and there are still hospital beds and ventilators available. Those days will soon be over, try the end of next week if not sooner, and the death toll will be going going gone out of there.

And remember, half of all US corona cases are still in New York State alone. There are 49 other states to go, that just about all still have open borders with each other. New York today, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut etc. tomorrow.

If Governor Andrew Cuomo was not exaggerating too much earlier today when he said he asked FEMA for 30,000 ventilators and got only 400, the ominous path forward is beginning to look like a very eery version of a Yellow Brick Road to nowhere, with the Wizard sipping banana daiquiries on his private yacht in the Caribbean.

Our friend Mike Mish Shedlock did a bit of math on Sunday with data from the Covid Tracking Project, and came up with this:

How Long to 1 Million US Cases?

Inquiring minds are investigating a relatively new data feed from the Covid Tracking Project. I plot four data series for the US: Negative tests, positive tests, hospitalized, and deaths. Arguably, hospitalizations are the most significant column but the project only has two days worth of data. Once I have another dfats point or two, I will plot a trendline manually.


Trendlines At the current pace, the number of positive coronavirus cases would hit 100,000 on March 26, and 1,000,000 on April 3. At the current pace, the number of coronavirus deaths would hit 1,000 on March 26, and 10,000 on April 5. Those are not my projections, those are observations of what would happen if the current trends last that long at the same pace.

At that point, the US had 32,000 cases. On Monday that had become 42,000. As I write this, it’s 52,000 and the day is far from over. And remember what I said yesterday, that on March 8, just 16 days ago, the US reported 409 cases.

When I posted Mish’s numbers, I questioned his prediction of 100,000 cases by Thursday, but that’s really just details. If not Thursday, it will be Friday. Yes, that’s a doubling in 2 or 3 days. Early next week, if not his weekend, it’ll be 200,000. And so on. Mish says 1 million in 10 days from now. I see no reason to doubt him.

Either tomorrow or Thursday, March 25 or 26, the US will overtake China for the no. 1 global position in total cases -which is some 81,000 now-. With very flawed to non-existent testing procedures, with ongoing endless political bickering, and with a looming huge shortage in hospital beds and ventilators; this is beginning to look like a very bad movie.

By Easter, much of US industrial production in many parts of the country will have to be shut down, the same way China’s was -and still is-, and Italy’s is. You can’t successfully run a factory -or an office for that matter-, if your employees get sick, stay home, end up in hospital or worse. Even in the US, one single case should be enough to close the entire facility down.

The victim will have to be quarantined, as must his/her entire family, everyone (s)he worked with must be tested, and so on. It works like that everywhere, and the US is no exception. It can’t be, the risk is too high.

Brace yourself. Don’t take my word for anything, look at the numbers and draw your own conclusions. My idea is Easter is going to be different from usual this year.

 

Much as I don’t want to, I must ask for your support. Readership is up a lot, but ad revenue only keeps dropping. I’ve said it before, it must be possible to run a joint like the Automatic Earth on people’s kind donations. These are no longer the times when ads pay for all you read, your donations have become an integral part of it. It has become a two-way street; and isn’t that liberating, when you think about it?

You heard it here first, like so many other things. And no, though it would be far more lucrative financially, the Automatic Earth will not adopt any paywalls, not here and not on Patreon. But you can still support us there, as well as right here. It’s easy. Thanks everyone for your donations overnight.

 

 

 

Support us in virustime. Help the Automatic Earth survive. It’s good for you.

 

Home Forums BREAKING: Virus Kills Easter Bunny

Viewing 16 posts - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #55924

    James Proudfoot Sun on a House, Dieppe 1937     Famous last words?! “I would love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said in an interview Tue
    [See the full post at: BREAKING: Virus Kills Easter Bunny]

    #55936
    Donn Hewes
    Participant

    Is there a regular address for someone that would like to write a paper check? Sorry to be so untech, but I just have a hard time making these things work. If you ever need a hand with a horse or a mule I am the guy to call. I wait for your posts every day. Never mind I found it!

    #55940
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #55941
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    So, just had a beer with neighbors, they on porch and me in driveway. A “normal” moment I have missed.

    I put forward this question to them: “Do you think everything will go back to normal, almost just like before?” One said “Yes, people have a short memory. Soon this will be past us, the Dow will be right back up, our 401k’s will be right back up, corporations will be whole and it’ll be a memory, a blip. Universities with full classrooms back in business.”

    But my cognitive (emotional?) bias says something different, that history shows us that at some point the authorities are NOT able to stitch it back together in a reasonable resemblance of the previous assemblage. Maybe it won’t be this time, but… But I’m certainly no fortune-teller.

    It seems that the Fed will print their money, that corporations will be made “whole”, but, …

    In my own experience I have had people occasionally play mind games with me, getting me to believe stuff that is further and further “out there” until one day a line is crossed and not only do I suddenly not believe the latest, but everything said prior is tossed out.

    So I guess I put that question out here, certainly not that anyone knows for sure, but this was quite a bit on the “American way of life”. Going back to “normal”?

    #55942
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    To me anyway, the future is fairly clear. Unless shelters are built, free healthcare provided, and sufficient food distributed to avoid starvation, sheltering in place (mitigation) will stagger along until something shatters it; unrest or the economy is restarted with a broken healthcare system continuing to kill patients and healthcare workers.

    Until there is a vaccine or an effective antiviral treatment, the only alternative to expansion, waves of reinfection and continuous deaths is a public health regime (containment) based on universal paid coronavirus testing, rigorous contact tracing to identify new cases, and enforced quarantine of the infected (ill and asymptomatic). Two negative tests and the quarantine ends. The economy can be restarted with healthy workers who won’t spread the virus. This will not be forever only until there is an effective treatment.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/23/mass-testing-is-only-sustainable-solution/

    Plutocrats will fight spending money to keep the riff-raff alive. Neoliberals will hate the restoration of functioning national governments and the loss of freedom to infect others. A safe functioning economy sooner will cost much less now than later. Also, it will save western civilization.

    #55943
    boilingfrog
    Participant

    Illargi’a advice, taken to heart: hold no debt; consume less; relocalize; increase community self-sufficiency; reduce dependence on centralized life-support systems.

    After typing the above question I realized why this was important: simply hearing different possibilities of what the future might hold allows me to be better prepared mentally for whatever happens; it won’t be as big a surprise.

    #55944
    Nomanisanisland
    Participant

    Sometime ago, I can’t remember where or when I read about an analysis of the average temperature in the US over a few days after 9/11. I thin the result was a 1 to 1.5 degree C increase due to the shutdown of the airlines. No planes in the sky, no high altitude exhaust particles.
    With the global shut we are having, as well as the industrial shutdown, I wonder what we might experience in the coming weeks? Less particulates in the atmosphere means more incident solar radiation = more heat.

    #55945
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    James Proudfoot Sun on a House, Dieppe 1937
    Lordy, lordy, what a beautiful painting. Fantastic light and shadows…

    As I have said a couple of times prior: there is no map going forward; we haven’t been here before.
    One step/day at a time seems to be the best option…
    Your leaders have all failed. Your society has failed.
    Your life is fully in your hands; it always has been, but now it’s blindingly obvious.
    I for one, wish everybody the very best; we’re not all going to survive this moment in our (human) history.
    I’m at a loss to see how things can ever return to “normal”; whatever the hell that is…

    #55946
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    I find myself vacillating between two different virus trajectories. There is a part of me that hopes for a speedy solution to the pandemic, so as to sustain the least amount of damage to those that are most vulnerable; not only the old and the poor, but the small business owner sans K Street lobbyist, who might never recover financially.

    The other part wishes for the pandemic to burn through the world with a destructive force, slowly grinding down the populations and power structures of all nations. A planetary cleansing if you would. A global reset that would provide the survivors a space in which to build a better world based on more socially responsible and equitable principles.

    The neoliberal disease of unregulated greed already extracts a heavy toll on the planet and its inhabitants. Maybe this is what’s needed to set the stage for something better.

    #55948
    Dr D Rich
    Participant

    Governor Andrew Cuomo says we should all help New York because helping New York will teach us how to help ourselves when coronavirus hits us all weeks later.
    This exhortation is reminiscent of a certain NYC mayor’s appeal to us all after 911.
    There’s never any mention as to NYC’s assistance to the rest of us or any documented follow through.

    #55949

    Would you choose a lung-wrenching respirator if there were an off-label, known-to-be-safe antimalarial which has proven to be effective, at least in some cases?
    I felt so much easier when the chloroquine compounds were suggested: a treatment that defeats the virus in a week or less. Do the clinical trials, of course- but if I go in with The Virus, I want the soft treatment first before I am near-death facing a respirator: I don’t care if it is “approved”.
    Easter will still happen. It’s a state of mind, not a thing.

    #55950
    zerosum
    Participant

    We have never live through a jubilee.
    LOOK Its happening, HIDING BEHIND THE VIRUS. Its a jubilee for the connected elites.
    All of that MMT money is being used to save the elites.

    We will be able to write the history books of what life is like after a elite jubilee

    #55951
    WES
    Participant

    My read of history says the people are always worse off after a crisis due to the elites using the opportunity to steal more wealth from the people than they could get away with in normal times.

    During a crisis, the normal checks break down allowing the elites to plunder without restraint.

    Observing Washington and Ottawa, there is no crisis, it is business as usual.

    #55952
    WES
    Participant

    Norminisanisland:

    If you are talking global warming, I am all for it!

    Send it my way please! I can’t wait any longer!

    Yesterday, in Toronto we had a silent shot of snow!

    I want to be able to step outside of my igloo!

    #55953

    Here is a prayer that may or may not be pertinent for these times:

    Forgive us our secrets as we forgive those
    Of our friends and our loved ones.
    We only suppose our secrets are hidden from curious eyes.
    Let us not be mistaken:
    Our secrets breed lies.

    Forgive us our secrets as we forgive those
    Of our experts and leaders, who wear them like clothes
    To hide indiscretions; for power; for ill-
    Let us not be mistaken:
    Our secrets can kill.

    Started in 1983. Released into the wild today.

    #55981
    Dr. D
    Participant

    7 x 7 = 49
    1971 + 49 = 2020

    Cuomo says he will not sacrifice a single New Yorker to save the Republic. What a pal! That’s the kind of spirit we need to win this war. Who do we surrender to next? A: Fear, of course. Fear is the mindkiller. Clearly.

Viewing 16 posts - 1 through 16 (of 16 total)
  • You must be logged in to reply to this topic.