Today’s News 8th April 2020

• Will COVID-19 Derail The African Century?
  Will COVID-19 Derail The African Century?

  Authored by Michael Wilkerson via Project Syndicate,

  In The Fortunes of Africa, author Martin Meredith describes a Dutch sailing ship that dropped off a load of laundry for the Khoikhoi, the local inhabitants of the southwestern cape of Africa whom Europeans called Hottentots. The year was 1713. The Khoikhoi washed the laundry and were duly paid.

  But the laundry was carrying smallpox. Over the next year, the community was laid to waste. Nine out of ten Khoikhoi died, and the tribe eventually disappeared from the Cape.

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  Once again, a foreign pathogen is threatening Africa. The full impact of COVID-19 will be felt there later than in the rest of the world, but the financial markets have already exacted their toll. Even before the virus has made much headway on the continent, African currencies, sovereign debt, and public equities have fallen dramatically, in many cases experiencing losses far greater than in developed or other developing and emerging markets. The impact on African equity markets has already been worse than in the depths of the global financial crisis.

  But, if managed properly, the pandemic may prove to be a loud hiccup on the way to realizing the African Century. As an investor and philanthropist in Africa for more than a decade, I have been focused on the unparalleled opportunity that the continent represents. As former South African President Thabo Mbeki put it in his 1999 victory speech, “The people of our country have given an unequivocal directive that we must work together for the African Renaissance, for the emergence of the 21st Century as the African century.” Strong underlying growth, attractive demographic trends, improved governance, stability, and transparency imply enormous opportunity over the long run, with the potential for tens of millions to be lifted out of poverty.

  Africa’s population, growing at 2.5% per year (about twice the pace of India), is expected almost to double within the next 30 years. By the end of this century, Africa will surpass Asia in the number of working-age adults.

  With this growth come challenges. Millions of able-bodied African young people will require education, jobs, housing, health care, and other social goods that their countries today are largely unable to provide. While the coming youth bulge holds great promise, it could jeopardize geopolitical stability if it is mishandled. A generation of under-educated, under-employed, and economically frustrated youth is a powder keg that could disrupt societies not just in Africa, but across the globe.

  COVID-19 will interrupt the African Century in the short term. Lockdown enforcement may cause social unrest. Already, there have been protests and near-riots in Nairobi, Johannesburg, and elsewhere.

  Lockdowns in large African cities are not the same as in China, Italy, or the United States. Housing settlements are informal and population densities are higher. Food and other essentials must be bought and consumed daily – often from open-air markets and kiosks, with cash earned the same day. Social distancing is impossible when five or more household members are sleeping in a single poorly ventilated room. Washing hands frequently is difficult when water has to be fetched from an unprotected community source down the road.

  Hunger speaks louder than government edicts. Most African workers are involved in primary agriculture and must be able to plant, harvest, and process their crops. After all, there is no point in living now only to starve later.

  African leaders will continue to look abroad for support. Many African governments, having tilted easily and early to the Chinese sphere of influence, have begun seeking alternatives elsewhere. But China will seek to capitalize on the crisis. For example, China will offer financial, medical, and other assistance, as it has with Italy. And China’s aggressive and decisive actions to combat the pandemic at home will be seen by many as a paradigm for Africa, given Europe and America’s disjointed and inept responses so far.

  But Africa could emerge from the pandemic with less lasting damage than many fear. Leaders have learned important lessons from epidemics, notably Ebola. Warm climates, a mostly young and rural population, and lower rates of regional travel may slow the spread of the virus and hold down its mortality rate.

  True, African institutions are too frail and under-resourced to cope with the pandemic and its economic fallout, and the continent’s medical systems are woefully unprepared. But financial and institutional support from Europe and the US will help mitigate the harm, particularly if solutions focus on delivering much-needed education, supplies, and infrastructure to where the needs are greatest.

  In order to realize the promise of the African Century in the not-too-distant future, African countries cannot do it alone. As Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s finance minister, recently told the Financial Times, this is “a break the glass moment” for the continent – an emergency in which international actors need to take drastic action if the world’s poorest region is to avoid a human and economic catastrophe. Recognizing Africa’s unique population, circumstances, and geopolitical significance is essential.

  We cannot permit COVID-19 to halt Africa’s progress. The continent’s leaders and its developed-country partners can and must contain the pandemic. The Khoikhoi’s fate is a warning. It must not become a prologue.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 04/08/2020 – 02:45

• China Forces Italy To Buy Back PPE It 'Donated'
  China Forces Italy To Buy Back PPE It ‘Donated’

  China has distributed nearly 4 billion masks to foreign countries as it ramps up production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), a move to restore its image as a global leader focused on humanitarian relief amid the COVID-19 pandemic that originated in its country and spread across the world. 

  However, The Spectator provides a new account of how China’s latest diplomacy has turned out to be an absolute ‘disaster,’ in the latest example with Italy and other European countries. 

  China told the world that it would donate tons of PPE to Italy to slow the virus outbreak. Reports now indicate that China actually charged Italy for PPE, instead of donating. It also turns out the PPE China sent over was the same equipment that Italy donated to China earlier in the year. What a mess… 

  “Before the virus hit Europe, Italy sent tons of PPE to China to help China protect its own population. China then has sent Italian PPE back to Italy — some of it, not even all of it … and charged them for it,” a senior Trump administration official told The Spectator.

  Since March 1, China has exported 3.86 billion masks, 37.5 million pieces of PPE, 16,000 ventilators, and 2.84 million test kits across the globe, according to the New York Post. 

  

  Many countries who have received masks and other medical equipment from China have complained about the quality does not meet medical standards. China has apologized for quality issues and blamed its defective equipment on others.

  Last week, we noted that the Netherlands was forced to recall 1.3 million face masks produced in China because they did not meet safety standards.

  In Spain, the Ministry of Health on March 26 revealed that 640,000 COVID-19 tests that it had purchased from China were defective.

  On March 28, the French government, which has several weeks of medical supplies left, announced it had ordered one billion face masks from China. It remains to be seen if the masks will be defective 

  “It’s so disingenuous for Chinese officials now to say we are the ones who are helping the Italians or we are the ones who are helping the developing world when, in fact, they are the ones who infected all of us,” the senior administration official said.

   “Of course, they should be helping. They have a special responsibility to help because they are the ones who began the spread of the coronavirus and did not give the information required to the rest of the world to plan accordingly.”

  The official also said China’s disinformation campaign to downplay the severity of the virus delayed the administration’s response to prepare the country for an outbreak by at least a month.

  “The disinformation that China has put out is crippling responses around the world… We’re operating on some level with a hand-tied behind our back.” 

  The revelations surrounding Italy and faulty medical equipment shipments to European countries are fueling distrust among Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is attempting to position himself as the world’s new humanitarian superpower.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 04/08/2020 – 02:10

• COVID-19 & The Looming Collapse Of Europe's Single Currency
  COVID-19 & The Looming Collapse Of Europe’s Single Currency

  Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

  As the coronavirus unleashes economic shockwaves across Europe, the European single currency, the most visible symbol of European unification, is facing collapse.

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  The eurozone – a monetary union of 19 of the 27 Member States of the European Union that have adopted the euro as their common currency – is being buffeted not only by the prospect of a deep and long-lasting recession. Northern and Southern European countries are also feuding over possible financial support for Italy and Spain, the EU’s third- and fourth-largest economies, which have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus.

  On March 13, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde dismissed calls by Italy for financial assistance to help it cope with the pandemic. After her comments rattled financial markets, Lagarde quickly reversed course and said that the ECB was “fully committed to avoid any fragmentation in a difficult moment for the euro area.” Italian President Sergio Mattarella replied that Italy had a right to expect solidarity from beyond its borders rather than obstacles.

  On March 18, the ECB announced that, in an effort to calm sovereign debt markets, it would spend €750 billion ($810 billion) to purchase bonds issued by national governments. Lagarde tweeted: “Extraordinary times require extraordinary action. There are no limits to our commitment to the euro.” Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of the Guardian newspaper, wrote that the ECB’s announcement was evidence that, without a massive support package, the eurozone was in danger of collapse:

  “The situation is immensely more dangerous — both economically and politically — than it was when spiraling Italian and Spanish bond yields prompted Mario Draghi’s [President of the European Central Bank between 2011 and 2019] “whatever it takes speech” in 2012. With people dying in their thousands, borders closing and activity collapsing, the entire European project is at risk.”

  On March 26, EU leaders, during a virtual summit held by video conference, were unable to agree on an economic response to the coronavirus. A day earlier, nine eurozone countries — Belgium, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain — called for a common debt instrument, called “coronabonds,” to mitigate the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis. “We are all facing a symmetric external shock, for which no country bears responsibility, but whose negative consequences are endured by all,” they said in a letter.

  Austria, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, dubbed the eurozone’s “frugal four,” rejected the idea of issuing joint debt to finance economic recovery in Southern Europe. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that issuing joint debt would be “crossing the Rubicon” because it would turn the eurozone into a “transfer union” in a way that was not foreseen by the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union and laid the foundation for the single currency. “I cannot foresee any circumstance under which we will change our position,” he said.

  Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra, in a letter to parliament, warned that coronabonds would introduce the threat of “moral hazard” by disincentivizing economic reform in debt-ridden Southern Europe. He also called on the European Commission, the EU’s administrative arm, to investigate why countries such as Italy and Spain have not made adequate economic reforms since the 2008 financial crisis.

  A European diplomat quoted by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant described Hoekstra’s comments as a “serious insult” to Southern Europe. Another diplomat said that the comments were a “Dutch middle finger to the south.”

  Southern European countries have the option of tapping funds from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the eurozone’s bailout fund, which lends money under strict conditions. Those countries are reluctant to use the ESM because they would be saddled with long term debt that would be hard to repay, and because the conditions would impinge on national sovereignty.

  Writing for the Wall Street Journal, correspondent Marcus Walker explained the dynamic:

  “Northern offers of loans with strings attached strike the south as punitive and inadequate. Southern clamor to issue joint bonds sound to the north like a demand to use its credit card….

  “The specter of a divided eurozone remains. Unless the economic shock of lockdowns is quickly overcome, Italy and Spain are in danger of emerging from the coronavirus crisis as poorer countries. A renewed depression in Southern Europe would also be bad news for northern nations, whose industries and banks profit from the overall health of the region’s economy.”

  In other words, if the coronavirus crisis eventually causes Italy to default on its debt, the reverberations will be felt across Europe — and the globe. Italy, with a GDP of nearly $2 trillion, is said to be “too big to fail, too big to bail.” Desmond Lachlan, a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, noted:

  “Unlike Greece, Italy is too big an economy to fail for the euro to survive and too big and costly an economy for its European partners to save….

  “In gauging Italy’s systemic importance to the global economy, one should bear in mind that its economy is approximately 10 times the size of that of Greece and that it is the eurozone’s third-largest economy.

  “Equally important is the fact that after the United States and Japan, Italy has the world’s third-largest sovereign debt market with more than $2.5 trillion in outstanding government debt.

  “It is difficult to conceive of a scenario where an Italian debt default would not trigger a European banking crisis. Were that indeed to occur, it must be expected to have global economic and financial market ramifications.”

  The Associate Editor of the UK-based newspaper Independent, Sean O’Grady, wrote that the coronavirus crisis could catapult Italy into bankruptcy:

  “Italy’s crisis is Europe’s. When Italy catches a cold, Europe will catch pneumonia. The euro cannot permit a major economy (Italy is the eurozone’s third-largest) to collapse in a disorderly mess.”

  In Spain, which recently overtook Italy as the epicenter of the coronavirus in Europe, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez committed €200 billion ($215 billion) — 20% of the country’s GDP — to alleviate the economic and social consequences of the pandemic. When asked how he would pay for that amount of spending, Sánchez replied that he was counting on financial help from “Europe.”

  Meanwhile, the coronavirus crisis is wreaking havoc across the eurozone, which suffered an unprecedented collapse in business activity in March 2020, according to IHS Markit, a London-based information provider. “Business sentiment about the year ahead has plunged to the gloomiest on record, suggesting policymakers’ efforts to date have failed to brighten the darkening picture,” it wrote. A survey by McKinsey & Company forecast that eurozone GDP will fall by 10.6% in 2020, and will not return to pre-crisis levels until the end of 2024.

  On April 6, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire warned that France is likely to see its deepest recession since the end of World War II this year because of the coronavirus crisis. “The worst growth figure in France since 1945 was in 2009, after the great financial crisis of 2008: -2.2%. We will probably be far beyond -2.2% this year,” Le Maire told the Senate Economic Affairs Committee. “This shows the extent of the economic shock we are facing,” he added.

  France, the eurozone’s second-largest economy after Germany, imposed a nationwide stay-at-home order since March 17. The lockdown will last until at least April 15. One month of confinement would cost France around 3 points of GDP over a year, and two months of confinement around 6 points, according to French Statistics Agency INSEE.

  French President Emmanuel Macron warned his fellow EU leaders that the coronavirus outbreak risked undoing the bloc’s central pillars if they failed to show solidarity in this crisis. “What’s at stake is the survival of the European project,” he said.

  Achim Truger, a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, said that he believes that coronabonds are necessary to prevent a collapse of the euro:

  “All countries in Europe are being hit by the epidemic — Italy and Spain particularly hard. All countries, including Germany, must therefore be able to make the necessary health expenditures and take measures to bridge the economic crisis. This is only possible through additional government debt, and this must be guaranteed to prevent another euro crisis. If the debt loads of Italy and Spain rise sharply, they will be pushed into budget cuts, thus economic, social and political crises, which would ultimately lead to a sovereign debt crisis and a collapse of the euro and the EU. Therefore, there must now be a joint, solidarity-based solution.”

  Oliver Hartwich, a German economist and prominent commentator on European affairs who is the Executive Director of the Wellington-based think tank The New Zealand Initiative, summed up the European predicament:

  “Today, not a single European country is doing well which means there is limited willingness for European countries to come to each other’s aid. They are busy dealing with their own crises. Just witness how Italy has been left alone with its crisis by Europe and now rather gets its medical support from China….

  “An almighty economic earthquake is in the making. In a few weeks or months, several large European economies will require bailout and assistance packages. These will be several times larger than anything Europe has seen. Yet no country, central bank or institution will be eager or even able to provide them. Even the gargantuan sums on the table now will not be enough.

  “Incidentally, forget about the International Monetary Fund. It was already stretched when it got involved with Greece last time. It cannot bail out all of Europe when the euro collapses.”

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 04/08/2020 – 01:35

• Putin Tested Regularly For COVID-19, Controversially Resumes In-Person Meetings
  Putin Tested Regularly For COVID-19, Controversially Resumes In-Person Meetings

  Russia saw its single biggest one-day spike in COVID-19 cases Monday, at 954 new cases – amid a current total of 7,497 confirmed cases and 59 deaths – most centered in Moscow.

  Despite the Russian capital by far seeing most cases, nearly all of Russia’s 140 million plus citizens are currently in “home isolation” even though some regions have yet to see a single case in the geographically expansive country.

  Meanwhile, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that President Vladimir Putin is being tested regularly for COVID-19 after previously shaking hands with Moscow doctor Denis Protsenko, himself shortly after confirmed for the virus, which caused Putin to work remotely in isolation since the March 24 encounter. 

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  Speaking of Putin, Peskov said, “[He gets tested] as often as his doctor sees fit,” without going into details. “I do not deal with the matters of the president’s medical care,” he added.

  The response arose after Putin appeared to loosen up his self-isolation regimen, given on Monday top officials from the country’s far east traveled to the Kremlin to meet with Putin in person. 

  According to TASS, “Peskov noted that Putin’s decision to hold a meeting with Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yuri Trutnev and Minister for the Development of the Far East and Arctic Alexander Kozlov at the Kremlin is not a violation of the self-isolation regime.”

  “Yes, he [Putin] did come to the Kremlin yesterday,” Peskov said, while adding the president “does not visit public places and does not meet a large amount of people.”

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  Peskov emphasized this includes not only Putin himself being subject to regular tests, but anyone in his presence or who enters his office for a meeting. “All precautionary measures are being taken.”

  In a speech to the public outlining the extension of a national paid work stoppage on Monday, Putin said some less-impacted regions will be able to loosen policies as local conditions see fit. 

  “There are regions where not a single case of the disease has been identified, although there are fewer of them as time goes on,” noted Putin.

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  No doubt, Russian leaders are closely watching the condition of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was moved to intensive care yesterday. Johnson is significantly younger (at 55) than the 67-year old Russian president.

  “I would like to express my sincere support at this difficult moment for you,” Putin was quoted as saying in a Tuesday message to Johnson. “I am sure that your energy, optimism and sense of humor will help to defeat the disease.”

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Wed, 04/08/2020 – 01:00

• Government To Decide What Items Are Essential Purchases And What Things You're Not Allowed To Buy
  Government To Decide What Items Are Essential Purchases And What Things You’re Not Allowed To Buy

  Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

  Living under lockdown restrictions, prevalent in nearly every state, is about to get a whole lot worse. The government in the United States and Canada has decided to take away the guesswork in the stores that are still open and decide for you what’s “essential” and what’s not.

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  When I have gone to the store to pick up groceries (I’m still getting fresh produce while I can), I also like to pick up a couple of things that are pleasant diversions: magazines, a crossword puzzle book, coloring pencils, some craft supplies. It’s nice to have some things that are enjoyable on hand to keep lockdown from feeling so grim and torturous. If the store is already open, getting a sunny yellow pillow for the living room is a pick-me-up, not a frivolous jaunt to a place I wasn’t already going. When we had a birthday in the family, we even picked up a few small gifts on our regular trip to the grocery store to provide a sense of normalcy.

  But the days of getting a random item to brighten a family member’s day may be numbered. The government (at least in some places) wants to make this already unpleasant time as dismal as possible for us all.

  Vermont has started a worrisome trend.

  Vermont has decided to choose for you what is essential and what is not, banning the sale of non-essential items at stores like Target, Walmart, and Costco.

  The Agency of Commerce and Community Development (ACCD) is directing large “big box” retailers, such as Walmart, Target and Costco, with in-store sales of food, beverage and pharmacy, as well as electronics, toys, clothing, and the like to cease in-person sales of non-essential items in order to reduce the number of people coming into the stores.

  “Large ‘big box’ retailers generate significant shopping traffic by virtue of their size and the variety of goods offered in a single location,” said Agency of Commerce and Community Development Secretary Lindsay Kurrle.  “This volume of shopping traffic significantly increases the risk of further spread of this dangerous virus to Vermonters and the viability of Vermont’s health care system. We are directing these stores to put public health first and help us reduce the number of shoppers by requiring on-line ordering, delivery and curbside pickup whenever possible, and by stopping the sale of non-essential items.” (source)

  Retailers are asked to close certain areas of the stores, rope them off to deny access, or pull non-essentials from their shelves.

  What’s considered non-essential?

  The Burlington Free Press reports the following items have been deemed non-essential purchases:

  • Arts and crafts items.

  • Beauty supplies.

  • Carpet and flooring.

  • Clothes.

  • Consumer electronics.

  • Entertainment (books, music, movies).

  • Furniture.

  • Home and garden.

  • Jewelry.

  • Paint.

  • Photo services.

  • Sports equipment.

  • Toys.

  So a store you’re already at is telling you that grabbing some hand lotion to soothe your dry, cracked skin from the constant application of hand sanitizer is non-essential? Getting a book to read while you’re locked down is against the rules? You can’t do a home improvement project while you’re stuck at home?

  I fail to see how this is going to stop the spread of a coronavirus if the shopper is already at the store and the employees are also already at the store.

  In fact, it seems to me that this would be helpful to our gasping and dying economy. But what would I know? Dinesh Iyer, Assistant Professor of Management at Rutgers School of Business-Camden, says the stores don’t need our frivolous little purchases.

  “I think the economy can wait,” he said. “Most corporations have access to debt and finances that are not available to the common folk.”

  Corporations can “leverage their assets and tide through difficult times” by borrowing larger sums of money at lower interest rates and more frequently than you or I can,” he said.

  “We have an opportunity to do all the things around the house that we have been putting off, spend time with family, learn a new skill,” Iyer said.

  He even cautions against online shopping.

  “The online shopping can wait,” Iyer said. “But if you must, you can always add the items of interest to your wish-list. And after the crisis, if you still need it, go for it. In the meantime, conserve the resources. You will be saving lives.” (source)

  It’s rather curious how Iyer thinks us “common folk” will be able to do those things around the house and learn new skills without the supplies to do so.

  One of the most alarming things is that garden supplies are considered non-essential.

  Of all the times in the world you need most to plant a garden, now is the time. But in Vermont’s directive, even the sale of garden supplies is non-essential.

  …showrooms and garden sections of large home improvement centers should be closed.  (source)

  And readers shared this photo from a store in Vermont.

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  The government of Vermont says that it isn’t really accurate.

   Recent pictures circulating on social media appear to be from a box store which has roped off access to “non-essential” areas of the store, per guidance from ACCD, with various seed packets behind the roped-off section.  As stated above, agricultural seeds have been deemed “essential” in Vermont per the Governor’s executive order, however a homeowner’s access to seeds has been modified to meet the Governor’s executive order.

  We’re hoping that retailers and consumers alike restrict in-person shopping to items that need to be purchased in-person and are of a time sensitive nature. While the state recognizes the importance of gardening as a source of food for many Vermonters, the ability to browse for seeds and purchase them in person doesn’t outweigh the risk of spreading the virus. Retailers can continue to make seeds available online, delivery and curbside. (source)

  Okay. You can just buy them online…or can you?

  Buying seeds online isn’t an option either.

  Almost every seed company readers in the preparedness community have tried to make purchases from has said, sorry, but we’re just selling to commercial operations this year.

  Johnny’s Select Seeds has the following announcement on their home page:

  Here’s what you can expect as of March 31st, 2020:

  • At this time, we are accepting new orders only from commercial farmers shipping to the U.S. and Canada and international wholesale customers. We plan to resume taking orders from all customers on April 14th. This restriction applies to all orders placed via our website, phone, and email. This was a difficult decision and we apologize for the inconvenience.

  • Commercial Farmers only: Please login to your website account before placing your order or call our contact center at 1-877-564-6697 for assistance. If you have forgotten your password, you can find information on resetting your password here.

  • Orders placed with our standard shipping option prior to March 31st, 2020 may experience a shipment delay of 5–10 days. Commercial orders placed on or after March 31st, 2020 may experience a shipment delay of 1–2 days.

  • You may experience a longer than usual response time when you phone in your order, call on us to answer growing questions, or email us to make inquiries.

  • We have closed our retail store in Winslow, Maine, and will not be hosting farm tours until further notice.

  We remain honored that you have chosen Johnny’s. Whether you have been buying from Johnny’s for 25 years or this is your first order, please know that we care deeply about helping you through the challenges of this coronavirus outbreak. Call or email us if you need growing advice or help finding products. (source)

  So…you can’t get seeds from your local Walmart garden center if you’re in Vermont and you can’t order seeds from seed stores. Good luck with that garden you were hoping would help see you through this disaster unless you’ve already got seeds put back from previous years.

  What can we expect?

  I think it’s extremely likely that Vermont’s idea will catch on and spread across the country. Just like lockdowns began in a couple of areas then spread state by state, don’t be surprised when this trend does also. The province of Ontario in Canada has just closed all their hardware stores and is limiting purchases only to curbside pick-up. Here’s what you need to be prepared to see:

  • Don’t expect that you’re going to be able to pop over to Lowes or Home Depot to pick up seedlings – or even seeds – for your summer garden.

  • Don’t expect that you’ll be able to replace your children’s flipflops or sandals for the summer regardless of the growth of their feet – this could be considered “non-essential.”

  • Don’t expect to be able to replace clothing for growing children – at least not in person.

  • Don’t expect to get any summer toys for the kids to play with while they’re in the back-yard – non-essential.

  • Don’t expect to be able to buy a bigger size of pants because you ate all your quarantine candy. You’re going to have to squeeze yourself into your old pants.

  • Don’t expect to be able to get the fabric to make masks – remember? Craft supplies are non-essential.

  Really, don’t expect anything. Because for some reason, it seems like governments want to make an already difficult and stressful time even worse by taking away the possibility for any kind of pleasant past-time unless you already have all the supplies you need for that.

  This senseless crackdown not only makes things even more unpleasant, but it takes away even more streams of revenue for struggling businesses. And more than that, it’s limiting our ability to be as self-reliant as possible, leaving people to fight it out at the grocery store for dwindling resources with few options for creating our own food supplies.

  Those living in Vermont have unfortunately missed their window for anything but mail order. For the rest of us, if there are some things you were hoping to get – be it new curtains, paint for the living room, tile for the bathroom, pots for your container garden, or the supplies to make a new chicken coop – you’d better get it now before your state follows the lead of Vermont.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 23:40

• "Historic Moment" – Robo Van Shuttles COVID-19 Tests At Mayo Clinic In Florida 
  “Historic Moment” – Robo Van Shuttles COVID-19 Tests At Mayo Clinic In Florida 

  At a time when America’s hospital systems are overwhelmed with COVID-19 cases and deaths, one hospital system in Florida is using autonomous vehicles to transport medical supplies and test kits.

  The Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, recently announced that self-driving shuttles would transport COVID-19 tests from a drive-in testing clinic to the processing lab.

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  According to Mayo’s press release, “health care resources and staff are stretched thin,” and the hospital system believes robots can help limit exposure to the virus and free up healthcare workers’ time.

  Mayo says four shuttles have been in operation since March 30. The program is in partnership with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA), Beep, and NAVYA, all working together to ensure autonomous vehicle safety. 

  “This development is a historic moment for the Jacksonville Transportation Authority,” said Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr., CEO of JTA.

  “Along with our partners, Beep, NAVYA, and Mayo Clinic, we are leveraging our learnings from three years of testing autonomous vehicles through our Ultimate Urban Circulator program. Our innovative team saw this as an opportunity to use technology to respond to this crisis in Northeast Florida and increase the safety of COVID-19 testing.”

  Kent Thielen, MD, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida, said, “Using artificial intelligence enables us to protect staff from exposure to this contagious virus by using cutting-edge autonomous vehicle technology and frees up staff time that can be dedicated to direct treatment and care for patients.” 

  The proliferation of autonomous vehicles to transport infectious disease tests and medical supplies suggests that the pandemic could be the trigger for major hospital systems across the US to embrace an age of automation. We’ve noted on several occasions that robots will displace at least 20 million jobs through 2030. However, the virus crisis will likely speed up this transformative period, and instead of happening over ten years, it could come a lot quicker. 

   

   

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 23:20

• Why Did Fauci Cheer Use Of 'Untested' Drug For Coronavirus In 2013… But Now He's Skeptical
  Why Did Fauci Cheer Use Of ‘Untested’ Drug For Coronavirus In 2013… But Now He’s Skeptical

  Authored by Victor Rantala via BizPacReview.com,

  It’s been found that seven years ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed that he was encouraged by lab tests involving a combination of drugs that included hydroxychloroquine in antiviral experiments on a SARS-like coronavirus that had emerged at the time.

  Some observers are seeing that as puzzling…

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  Fauci, NIAID director and current Coronavirus Task Force rock star, has long been widely looked to as the nation’s ultimate authority on infectious diseases. As such, his record and history of public comments are especially subject to scrutiny and critiques at a time such as the current societal upheaval sweeping the globe.

  An ongoing point of contention being amplified by the media is Fauci’s cautious present-day perspective on the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, while so many others are eager to embrace the encouraging indicators of its potential effectiveness against today’s novel coronavirus.

  “We don’t have to start designing new drugs,” a process that takes years, Fauci says. “The next time someone comes into an emergency room in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, you would have drugs that are readily available. And at least you would have some data.”

  “Even though the treatment hasn’t gone through definitive trials, Fauci says, “if I were a physician in a hospital and someone were dying, rather than do nothing, you can see if these work.”

  Fauci, now so sour on hydroxychloroquine (+/- azithro) for covid19, despite its clinical promise, gushed in 4/2013 when a coronavirus [MERS] antiviral combo [ribavirin /interferon-alpha)] tested “only in cells in lab dishes” prevented viral replication! https://t.co/c9aN1b0nvZ pic.twitter.com/KBTLDUeIUW

  — Andrew Bostom (@andrewbostom) April 4, 2020

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  President Trump has repeatedly expressed his hope for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), even as Fauci has been careful to temper Trump’s enthusiasm for the drug’s prospects.

  Dr. Fauci quickly corrects Trump’s misstatements about hydroxychloroquine pic.twitter.com/Piim1PQSdh

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2020

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  FAUCI: “The president feels optimistic about something — his feeling about it.” pic.twitter.com/wNzgV7P6EF

  — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 20, 2020

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  On Friday, Fauci provided a nuanced explanation of his views on HCQ as a coronavirus treatment when he appeared on “Fox & Friends.”

  Brian pushes back, saying civilians & drs in some countries are taking HCQ for coronavirus, and wondering if people already on it are getting the virus. Fauci says “we really don’t care” if people *think* it works, “that’s not the issue,” & we should protect those already on it. pic.twitter.com/iPDDBLDhRV

  — Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) April 3, 2020

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  The Fox News hosts directed Fauci’s attention to a recent Sermo poll of more than 6000 physicians in 30 countries in which 37 percent rated HCQ as the “most effective therapy” in treating the novel coronavirus.

  “We don’t operate on how you ‘feel,’” Fauci commented, pointing out that the survey measured feelings or opinions.

  “We operate on what evidence is and data is.”

  “Fox & Friends” also played a clip of Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz directly asking for Fauci’s thoughts about HCQ’s promise as suggested in a “Chinese study from Wuhan, reflecting statistically significant improvement in recovering from fever, from cough, and from pneumonia as well.”

  “That was not a very robust study,” Fauci replied. “It is still possible that there is a beneficial effect, but the study that was just quoted, on a scale of strength of evidence, that’s not overwhelmingly strong. It’s an indication, a hint of it.”

  He added:

  “So although there is some suggestion that there is a benefit there, I think we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug. We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitively prove that any intervention, not just this one, but any intervention is truly safe and effective.”

  “But when you don’t have that information,” the doctor added, “it’s understandable, and I grant that … it’s understandable why people may want to take something anyway, even with the slightest hint of it being effective, and I have no problem with that.”

  The 79-year-old Fauci has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984, having served under six U.S. presidents, beginning with Ronald Reagan.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 23:00

• "I'd Rather Stay Unemployed Than Risk My Life" – Grocery Store Workers Strike As COVID-19 Deaths Soar
  “I’d Rather Stay Unemployed Than Risk My Life” – Grocery Store Workers Strike As COVID-19 Deaths Soar

  As we’ve been warning over the last several weeks, the beginning innings of social unrest in the Western world could be developing. Millions of people have just lost their jobs, the economy has crashed, and suicides and domestic violence are increasing, this is all the characteristics of a recession, if not a depression in the second quarter.

  Last week, Amazon and Instacart workers kicked off strikes to demand safety equipment and better pay amid the virus pandemic that has left some of their colleagues in the hospital, infected with the deadly virus. Amazon employees walked out of a Staten Island warehouse on Monday, the second week in a row. We noted last week how strikes and protests would likely spread “to other businesses.”

  And we were right, now workers at some Massachusetts grocery stores will protest on Tuesday morning to demand medical equipment and the need for hazard pay as their probabilities of contracting the virus are high.  

  Organizers told WCVB Boston that employees from Whole Foods, Stop & Shop, Trader Joes & Shaw are expected to join the rally, scheduled for 1100ET outside the Whole Foods at 348 Harrison Ave in Boston.

  The organizers are requesting that employers provide workers with “hazard pay of time and half for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis.” During the protest, workers are expected to abide by Massachusetts’ social distancing rules and stand 6 feet apart from others. 

  The protest comes as major supermarket chains across the country are starting to report an increase in virus cases and deaths. 

  On Monday, a Trader Joe’s worker in Scarsdale, New York, an employee at a Giant store in Largo, Maryland., and two Walmart employees from the same Chicago-area store have just died in recent days after their exposure to COVID-19, the companies said on Monday. 

  Some experts are saying the rise of virus cases and deaths at supermarkets across the country is because companies did not adequately prepare workers for a public health crisis: 

  “One of the biggest mistakes supermarkets made early on was not allowing employees to wear masks and gloves the way they wanted to,” Supermarket analyst Phil Lempert said. “They’re starting to become proactive now, but it’s still going to be much tougher to hire hundreds of thousands of new workers. We’re going to start seeing people say, ‘I’ll just stay unemployed instead of risking my life for a temporary job.'”

  Strikes and protests aren’t limited to an Amazon warehouse or Instant cart workers and or supermarkets, but now spreading to the fast-food industry.

  McDonald’s workers in Los Angeles staged a strike on Monday, demanding face masks and hand sanitizer after an employee tested positive for the virus. 

  Bartolome Perez, 30, a cook at the McDonald’s, told Fox 11 Los Angeles that a fellow employee tested positive.

   “We’ve been pleading for protective equipment for more than a month now, but McDonald’s is putting profits ahead of our health,” Perez said. 

  Perez claims that McDonald’s has yet to pay for any healthcare costs associated with testing employees. The restaurant has been shut down for sanitation. 

  Amazon and Instacart strikes last week have inspired the beginning innings of protests among low-income/low-wage workers, as it appears employees of Target’s delivery service Shipt will also strike on Tuesday. 

  And here’s some bad news that we outlined about the global COVID-19 infection curve on Monday, it appears the US is still in the exponential rise phase (acceleration), which means more people will get infected and die. 

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  The evolution of the pandemic is social unrest, already developing with strikes and protests at major companies. 

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 22:40

• Here Comes The Second Wave: Wuhan Lockdown Ends And Tens Of Thousands Are About To Flee The City
  Here Comes The Second Wave: Wuhan Lockdown Ends And Tens Of Thousands Are About To Flee The City

  Last week we reported that even as the world’s attention had shifted to the new global coronavirus outbreak epicenters of New York, Italy, Spain and other western nations, China – which rushed to restart its economy at any cost – had put a major county on lockdown after a new cluster of coronavirus infection had emerged. To wit, last Wednesday we learned that in post on its social media account, Jia county – which has a population of about 600,000 – said that no one can travel out of Jia county without proper authorization after one person tested positive.

  This new cluster emerged just days after China once again revised its virus reporting methodology to also include asymptomatic carriers of the disease, which naturally begged the question why China wasn’t reported his subset of infections previously.

  We got the answer yesterday when Mainland China reported 39 new coronavirus cases as of Sunday, up from 30 a day earlier, and the number of asymptomatic cases also surged, as Beijing continued to struggle to extinguish the outbreak despite drastic containment efforts. China’s National Health Commission said in a statement on Monday that 78 new asymptomatic cases had been identified as of the end of the day on Sunday, compared with 47 the day before. Of the new cases showing symptoms, 38 were people who had entered China from abroad, compared with 25 a day earlier, although how China keeps track of this on an instantaneous basis is unclear. Also it’s odd to blame “imports” as China also closed off its borders to foreigners, though according to Beijing most imported cases involve Chinese nationals returning from overseas.

  Worse, an update posted late on Tuesday showed that the number of most asymptomatic cases has nearly doubled since Sunday’s peak:

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  This means that whether asymptomatic or not, imported or domestic, Hubei-based or not, on April 5, China reported the most new Coronavirus cases in a month as slowly the disease appears to be reestablishing itself in the world’s most populous nation.

  This is a problem because it suggests that despite the now chronic data obfuscation, China may be about to unleash to a second wave of coronavirus infections – both domestically and internationally – something JPMorgan predicted is virtually inevitable.

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  It’s an even bigger problem because at midnight on Wednesday, China ended its lockdown of Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus first emerged and remains the symbol of a pandemic that has killed tens of thousands of people, shaken the global economy and thrown daily life into upheaval across the planet.

  Alas, as the NYT reports, the city that has reopened after more than 10 weeks is a profoundly damaged one, a place whose recovery will be watched worldwide for lessons on how populations move past pain and calamity of such staggering magnitude. What’s worse, is that judging by the latest reports, a new cluster of cases may be emerging and since Wuhan was ground zero, the risk is that by reopening Wuhan, China may be about to restart a whole new global wave of infections.

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  But first, a little background.

  Chinese authorities sealed off Wuhan, an industrial hub of 11 million people, in late January, in a frantic attempt to limit the outbreak’s spread. At the time, many outsiders saw it as an extreme step, one that could be tried only in an authoritarian system like China’s. But as the epidemic has worsened, governments around the world have enacted a variety of stringent restrictions on their citizens’ movements.

  Wuhan was by far the worst-hit part of the country, accounting for 50,008 confirmed coronavirus cases—61% of China’s total—and 2,571 deaths, or 77% of the national toll, according to official figures as of Monday.

  Meanwhile, some 1.4 million infections and 80,000 deaths have been reported worldwide — figures that are rising fast, and that officials say vastly understate the true extent of the pandemic, a pandemic which despite mainstream attempts to shift the topic, most likely emerged as a result of deadly leak (an involuntary one, one assumes) from the Wuhan Institute Of Virology. The contagion has slowed in hard-hit countries like Italy and Spain, but it continues to spread quickly elsewhere around the globe, including in the United States, which is approaching 400,000 known infections.

  News reports are filled with scenes of overflowing hospitals in New York City, uncollected bodies on streets in Ecuador, updates on the condition of Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, who is hospitalized in intensive care, and expert warnings that the epidemic could be exploding, undetected, in the poorest parts of the world. Most of Europe, India, much of the United States and many other places are under orders for businesses to close and most people to stay at home, abruptly crippling economies and throwing millions of people out of work.

  Yet as the world grapples with how to minimize transmission and isolate potential carriers by preaching a culture of “social distancing”, China is doing the opposite, and taking a massive gamble by allowing potential carriers to resume their normal social interactions with countless people.

  To be sure, that’s not how Beijing sees it: Wednesday’s reopening of Wuhan came after only three new coronavirus cases were reported in the city in the previous three weeks, and a day after China reported no new deaths for the first time since January. The report that China is fine sparked ridicule from such Sinophobes as Heyman Capital’s Kyle Bass who did not exactly believe China’s “data” to put it mildly:

  🛑China officially reported no new deaths from the Wuhan Virus today…but come to think of it, China hasn’t officially reported any deaths from the Tiananmen Square incident as of yet. Maybe it’s just a lag in reporting? #ChinaLiedPeopleDied #coronavirus #WuhanVirus #CCPVirus

  — 😷Kyle Bass😷 (@Jkylebass) April 7, 2020

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  Meanwhile, speculation is rife that the real infection numbers for Wuhan could be more than double that, according to two recent studies that estimated that the cumulative total for the city was already higher than 125,000 in February according to the WSJ. One study, by University of Hong Kong researchers, noted that China changed its criteria for diagnosis six times, including on Feb. 4, when it widened the testing pool considerably, leading to a surge in confirmed cases. If testing capabilities were available throughout the outbreak, and the Feb. 4 criteria had been applied throughout China’s crisis, 232,000 cases could have been detected in China by Feb. 20, with 127,000 cases in Wuhan alone, the researchers estimated. Additionally, as the WSJ also notes, experts and residents believe the official death toll excludes those who died at home or couldn’t be tested early on.

  Epidemiologists, US intelligence sources and Wuhan residents suspect that Chinese authorities substantially undercounted infections and deaths over the past several months, especially in Wuhan, in part to boost President Xi Jinping’s image.

  Some of the clearest indications that nothing is fixed comes from Wuhan itself: while some life, and traffic, have returned to Wuhan’s streets in recent days, most shops and restaurants are still closed. Local officials in full protective gear still guard entrances to residential neighborhoods, some of which are barricaded with metal fencing and awning.

  Authorities who had cut back on testing after conditions improved have ramped them back up, testing 12,000 people a day on average the past two weeks—60% more than New York City. Nationwide testing numbers haven’t been made public, and even if they were, the results would show only whatever Beijing wants.

  Until April 1, China didn’t publish figures for asymptomatic cases, which it defines as people who don’t yet show symptoms but have tested positive and could be infectious. Since then, Wuhan authorities have reported 194 new asymptomatic cases. They also said a total of 658 asymptomatic cases were under medical observation as of Monday. Health Times, a publication affiliated with the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper, quoted a senior doctor in Wuhan saying there could be 10,000 to 20,000 asymptomatic cases there, according to a survey done in the previous three days. The online articles was promptly deleted after it was published.

  Most skeptical that the Wuhan crisis has been solved are the city’s own residents, who say they are skeptical in part because local authorities tried to cover up the scale of the problem early on. Police reprimanded several people who tried to issue warnings via social media and officials warned doctors not to speak publicly about the disease. Restrictions on people retrieving deceased relatives’ ashes from funeral homes ahead of last Saturday’s Tomb Sweeping festival, a day when many Chinese visit ancestors’ graves, also aroused suspicions. Officials banned people from observing Tomb Sweeping rituals until April 30, saying it was to avoid cemetery overcrowding.

  Wuhan’s cemeteries and crematoriums have been heavily manned with police and other officials, with makeshift tents and desks erected outside to process grieving relatives. At the Biandanshan cemetery, Wuhan’s largest, an epidemic control official said there had been dozens of funerals there in recent days, a little more than normal, due to a backlog from the lockdown, when the cemetery was closed. 

  Such doubts, combined with the reports of new asymptomatic cases, are triggering fears of a potential second wave of infections that could undermine Beijing’s claim to have tamed the virus.

  Yet despite the all too real possibility that Wuhan is a ticking timebomb, ready to unleash a second wave of coronavirus infections on the world – and this time with mutations, making any potential immunity from the first wave null and void – China is scrambling to show to the world just how successful it has been in fixing its own crisis, and Chinese authorities lifted the mass quarantine of Hubei province except for Wuhan, its capital, on March 25.

  * * *

  As for Wuhan, after 76 days in quarantine the city’s lockdown – as well as controls on outbound travel – have now been lifted, just after midnight in China with authorities encouraging resumption of business operations for this critical industrial hub.

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  Which means that despite the mounting skepticism about what the full extent of the disease was in ground zero, and whether it has even been contained, starting Wednesday morning people can now leave after presenting to the authorities a government-sanctioned phone app that indicates — based on their home addresses, recent travels and medical histories — whether they are contagion risks. Of course, since this is a city of 11 million, there is no possible way that the local authorities will be enable to enforce this “filter.”

  The consequences – for China and the world – could be dire. Footage from state-run news outlets early Wednesday showed a rush of cars traveling through toll stations on the outskirts of Wuhan immediately after the restrictions were lifted.

  Cars leaving Wuhan: officials tell us that in seven hours since the lockdown lifted, 970 passenger vehicles have left the city pic.twitter.com/kn3vV3vSaE

  — Elizabeth Law 思敏 (@lizzlaw_) April 8, 2020

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  China’s Global Times took pride in showing that on Wednesday morning an airplane departed from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport to Sanya in South China’s Hainan Province on Wed. It was the first flight leaving the airport after Wuhan’s 76-day lockdown.

  A China Eastern airplane departs from #Wuhan Tianhe International Airport at 7:24 to Sanya in South China’s Hainan Province on Wed. It is the first flight leaving the airport after Wuhan’s 76-day lockdown. pic.twitter.com/jyjeHvb9ke

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) April 8, 2020

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  First train, plane leave #Wuhan as city ends lockdown https://t.co/NCZXO1GuIw pic.twitter.com/E72NwfEhrd

  — CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) April 8, 2020

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  But most terrifying is that, according to a state-run broadcaster, China’s national rail operator estimated that more than 55,000 people would leave Wuhan by train on Wednesday alone.

  At Wuhan’s Hankou train station. One of the first trains is departing the city is to nearby Jinzhou now. Passengers on the train said they’d been looking forward to leaving, to reuniting with family outside, for weeks. pic.twitter.com/OBCvnMqktv

  — Emily Feng 冯哲芸 (@EmilyZFeng) April 7, 2020

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  Wuhan restarts tomorrow! High-speed trains in arrays are ready for departure, on Wed, from three train stations of #Wuhan after a 76-day lockdown. Wuhan will lift its outbound travel restrictions starting from Wed. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/s70NOoP6xd

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) April 7, 2020

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  According to cp24.com, “tickets for trains out of Wuhan to cities across China already were advertised on electronic billboards, with the first train leaving for Beijing at 6:25 a.m. A line designated for passengers headed to the capital already was roped off.”

  In preparation for the end of the lockdown, Party Secretary Wang Zhonglin, the city’s highest-ranking official, inspected the city’s airport and train stations Monday to ensure they were ready. The city must “enforce prevention while opening up, maintain safety and orderliness and the assurance of stability,” Wang said.

  🇨🇳➡️ Thousands of travellers flocks to catch trains departing from #wuhan #China, early Wednesday as the lockdown is lifted so is the ban on traveling.

  #COVID19 #ChinaLiedPeopleDied #coronavirusinpakistan #covid19australia #IndiaFightsCornona #IndiaFightsCoronavirus pic.twitter.com/fhyGFLPIHI

  — 🔴 Global Politics (@Globalpoliticss) April 8, 2020

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  In other words, the horses are fleeing the barn… and this time thousands of them could be carriers of the deadly coronavirus. What is scarier is that it is as if China wants to spread a new wave of infections around the globe.

  To be sure, the city authorities clarified that while people who are healthy will be able to leave and enter Wuhan after Wednesday, most residential restrictions will remain in place. “Our city’s epidemic prevention and control situation is still grim,” read a notice from the city government published late Friday. Among the threats it cited were asymptomatic cases and people who retested as positive after recovering.

  People wait for the train at the Hankou Railway Station in Wuhan as travel restrictions for leaving the the epicenter of the global #COVID19 outbreak are lifted. Aly Song, Reuters pic.twitter.com/2XzgmSoJNi

  — ABS-CBN News Channel (@ANCALERTS) April 8, 2020

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  Of course, in this city of 11 million people, isolating and locking down potential carriers, especially if they are asymptomatic, is practically impossible. Consider that in Wuhan’s Meihuachi neighborhood, one local official said four to five asymptomatic cases had been found over the weekend across three residential complexes nearby, all of which were back under lockdown as a result.

  The question, of course, is how many other hundreds if not thousands of asymptomatic cases are there in Wuhan at this moment, and how many of them are about to jump in car, plane or train to unknown destination.

  That question can not be answered, and neither can the question of why China rushed to reopen the coronavirus ground zero without the proper precautions in place. To more accurately assess the number of asymptomatic cases in China, authorities would either need to do tests—ideally blood tests to screen for antibodies—on the whole population, which would be prohibitively expensive, or on large, carefully chosen samples. China has said it had started antibody sampling to better understand infection rates, but even if it is doing what it says it is, this is nothing more than a game of large numbers.

  Unfortunately, the numbers are certainly not in the world’s favor. Lin Xihong, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, co-wrote a recent study that estimated Wuhan had a cumulative total of 125,959 cases by Feb. 18, and that at least 59% were “unascertained” on any given day, most likely because they had no symptoms or only mild ones.  Even crazier, China’s National Health Commission said 1,033 asymptomatic cases were being monitored as of Monday, but it still hasn’t provided figures or estimates for before April 1.

  Another uncertainty is the total number of people China has tested nationwide. Wuhan has said it has performed 777,000 tests—enough to cover 7% of the city’s population and more than five times the level in Lombardy, Italy’s worst affected area.

  But what about the remaining 93%?

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  Here epidemiologists rightfully worry that local officials may have deliberately scaled back testing to satisfy political demands to show they have the pandemic under control, and to shift blame for any rebound onto cases imported from abroad, which is ironic because all foreign cases can ultimately be traced back to a source in China… most likely one that at one point or another was located in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  In any event, now that potentially millions of infected, asymptomatic Wu Flu carriers are about to leave their containment zone and spread across China first, and then the world, a second wave is virtually assured. The extent of a second wave “will depend on what strategy will be implemented on detecting and isolating those cases without symptoms,” said Harvard professor Lin Xihong. “This is the million-dollar question.”

  If only it were only a million: so far the damage to the global economy and the fiscal and monetary stimulus unleashed because of one Chinese virus has been in the tens of trillions… a number which may soon double or triple, as only one carrier needs to escape Wuhan to start a second wave of infections. Add a mutation that renders any existing coronavirus antibodies obsolete and China’s decision to reopen ground zero would have catastrophic consequences for the world.

  And here is the punchline: as we said yesterday, the $64 trillion (roughly in line with global GDP) question is whether the coming “second reinfection wave” is going to be smaller or bigger, similar to the Spanish Flu pandemic. Why? Because deaths in the second wave of the Spanish Flu, which is closest to the Coronavirus pandemic in its progression dynamics, were 5x greater than those from the first.

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  Which in turn leads to one final question: if the second wave of infections that China is about to unleash on the world results in millions of deaths, at what point will China’s action be viewed as an act of war?

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  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 22:21

• Eyes Wide Open: Will The "Masters Of The Universe" Notice No One Takes Them Seriously Anymore?
  Eyes Wide Open: Will The “Masters Of The Universe” Notice No One Takes Them Seriously Anymore?

  Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The intrusion of some wholly extraneous event – like a pandemic – into any given status quo doesn’t necessarily break it, in and of itself. But it exposes cruelly the shortcomings and workings of the existing status quo. It shows them, as not just stark naked, but also with its dark backstage of barely legal, dole-outs to business, and Wall Street friends, suddenly spotlighted.

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  Fyodor Dostoevsky sets out in The Brothers Karamazov an allegory that can be applied to our times, but was set in Seville, in the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day to the glory of God (rather than today’s ‘glory to Mammon’), and in that splendid auto da fé, when wicked ‘heretics’ were burnt alive. It was published in 1880.

  Into this city an entirely extraneous (shall we say non-human) event occurs, that deeply unsettles society: Citizens are suddenly snatched-up from their humdrum daily slog to see the status quo afresh – but now with eyes wide open.

  The Grand Inquisitor of Seville is outraged. This extraneous occurrence risks spoiling his carefully contrived status quo:

  “Oh, we shall persuade them [the citizenry of Seville] that they will only become free when they renounce their freedom to us, and submit to us. And shall we be right, or shall we be lying? They will be convinced that we are right … Receiving bread from us, they will see clearly that we take the bread made by their hands from them – [only] to give it back to them … In truth they will be more thankful for taking it from our hands – than for the bread itself! Too well, will they know the value of complete submission! We shall show them that they are weak, that they are only pitiful children, but that childlike happiness is the sweetest of all.

  “We will indulge them their sins; allow them to occupy themselves with their vices. We will monitor everything, regulate everything, order and legislate for everything – and be their conscience too – so that they do not have to trouble themselves to think, overly; or, to be obliged to make decisions. They exist only to serve us, the élite who rule over them: The millions, numerous as the sands of the sea, who are weak, must exist only for the élite, who rule over them. In this mystery, says the Grand Inquisitor, “lies the great secret of the world”.

  Well, here we are: We have an extraneous event: Covid-19. It is different, of course. The Inquisitor literally burnt-out the threat (alive), to the existing order in Seville. Similarly, our ‘Elect’ of today, are equally agog to preserve the status quo. And for reasons very similar to those of the Inquisitor.

  Today’s élites face, however, a much more complex paradigm: We are speaking here more of the consequences of Covid-19 on collective human psychology, rather than about the efficacy of any actions taken, or not taken, by the Fed, or G7 Central Banks. The threat in Seville, fundamentally, was about psychological transformation: The Seville ‘event’ induced citizens to question meaning in their lives – and to doubt human agency (and élite ‘agency’, in particular). It didn’t end well in Russia – or for the Inquisitors, ultimately.

  The issue for governments – at bottom – is how to resurrect an economy that has been placed into hibernation. Western leaders are fearful that if it is not awakened – and quickly – there may be permanent damage to the infrastructure of the real economy – and consequently, a series of defaults leading to a possible financial crisis, or implosion (i.e. curtains for the status quo). So, we hear a lot now about the cure being worse than the disease, i.e. a locked-down economy can be more harmful than letting people die of Covid-19.

  But the paradox here is that élites have no agency. This is not the War on Terror. There is no one to blame (though the U.S. would like to pin Covid-19 on China): ‘We didn’t start it’. ‘Death’ came to us – an event from ‘the beyond’. Combatting it has been declared ‘a full war’ nonetheless. There is nothing tangible, no real enemy ‘to fight’ – just a shape-shifting virus, that virologists tell us is not ‘alive’, but represents organisms that lie at the very edge of life. Such entities cannot literally be ‘killed’.

  And how to fight this war? Where is the battle plan? There is none. There can be none (beyond mitigating the reach of death). Dr John Ioannidis, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Stanford University, tells us that the modelling on which government plans for its ‘military’ campaign wholly depend is worthless:

  “The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300. Three months after the outbreak emerged, most countries, including the U.S., lack the ability to test a large number of people and no countries have reliable data on the prevalence of the virus in a representative random sample of the general population …”.

  Mortality rates, too, are similarly all over the place: As researchers debate what’s causing Italy’s 10%+ mortality rate, one thing is indisputable: mortality rates are climbing. Virtually every nation that has a large number of reported cases has continued to see mortality rates climb. In Spain, the mortality rate now stands at 8.7%. Ten days ago, it stood at 5.4%. In the Netherlands, the mortality rate stands at 8.3%. Ten days ago, it stood at 3.8%. In the United Kingdom, the mortality rate stands at 7.1%. Ten days ago, it stood at 4.6%. In France, the mortality rate stands at 6.7. Ten days ago, it stood at 3.9%.

  Death, in other words, it seems, may be getting the upper hand in this ‘war’.

  And yet, behind the governmental fear for the financial and economic status quolies another ‘demon’: mass hysteria and revolt, by those who, now unemployed, haven’t the money to buy food. Again this – the psychology of a rioting mob – is a figment of collective psyche. It can’t literally by killed by soldiers. This psyche is already beginning in the south of Italy where people, who say they are hungry and have no money, are storming supermarkets, and looting food. (It is only food, for now, but soon, it will be raiding for money).

  Social disorder and riot is likely to spook governments even more than the deflating balloon of their economies. But isn’t this what the ‘War on Death’ paradigm is about? Police on the streets; the army patrolling; martial law; and the criminalisation of unauthorised movement: It is mounted in readiness for the prospect of popular revolt: against the fear that the Paris – mainly immigrant – banlieues, or the Italian Mezzogiorno, will explode.

  The Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies recently warned that a “social bomb could explode at any moment” over Western cities. That is because the evolution of the pandemic, which has crashed the American economy into a depression, could result in social unravelling in major metros, specifically in low-income areas.

  A governmental desperation – stemming from the risks of social and economic disintegration – is likely to push governments to gamble on either an early-ish lifting of social-distancing, or a partial lifting. But the same dilemma applies: governments will be doing this ‘blind’, or on the basis of empirically flawed modelling.

  And a gamble it is. The Signier Laboratory gives us this illustration of the possible maths behind ‘distancing’:

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  This, like most current models, is guess-work in terms of the underlying assumptions (such as a rate of infection of 2.5). But its’ message is clear. Going for partial opening or localised opening will invite some sort of Phase Two. China already is experiencing this – and has had to lockdown Jin Province, after it had just opened Hubei.

  Where then does the balance of advantage lie for desperate leaderships? Who knows? A phase II may arrive anyway; the virus might mutate (as happened in August 1918, with Spanish ‘flu), and become more (or less) lethal. What makes Covid-19 infection particularly difficult to manage or predict is that it drops infection from day ‘0’, yet the carrier will not experience any sense of having been infected (or being ill at all) until 5–8 days later. Yet all that time, he or she will be 100% infectious – and potentially spreading a new phase. (There is no general testing for antibodies).

  Governments likely will ease distancing anyway to alleviate the social and economic pressures. They will have their fingers crossed that Covid-19 does not return in a new phase to ‘thumb its nose’ – and make a nonsense of all these measures. It is a gamble – and these governments’ credibility will be on the line – whatever they choose. They are becalmed between Scylla and Charybdis: no good options.

  So, where does this take us? To a (not unexpected) schizophrenia. On the one hand, there are those – so in thrall (in the J B Yeats sense) to the status quo – that anything other than a rapid re-instatement of ‘normality is beyond their reach. Mental retort sealed shut. As one example:

  “One well known set of UK asset managers this morning [yesterday] are blithely predicting a V-Shaped recovery from the third quarter onwards …They think QE Infinity packages have “resolved” the debt bubble, the equity market is now realistically priced for a global recovery, governments have mitigated the damage, and we will see a massive jump in sentiment, activity and repressed demand when the lockdowns end, and economies reopen – with a leap of unfettered joy”.

  This line of thinking holds that what is happening in the U.S. and Europe is not a real recession. The economic fundamentals were great. We shut down the economy only because of Covid-19. So, if we were just to start it back up again – everything will be fine.

  But, just as heavy doses of refined sugar may impact the human brain in a manner similar to addictive drugs by releasing dopamine, the brain’s “reward” chemical. So too, since 2008/9, we have what Dan Amoss calls, a ‘sugar-rush economy’.

  So, the prescription inevitably – to maintain the status quo – is more sugar, more spending and more money printing. And if the effect starts to wane, the reaction is to ‘double the dose’. It is all wishful thinking. It’s a part of the delusion. The economy wasn’t fine. Since 2008, the Fed has fed a sugar-rush economy. It’s a bubble. That’s the problem. And the bubble may have been fatally pricked.

  What happens, when finally, we are released from lockdown: We will walk out – still blinking – into the daylight, but it will be a very different world. We will see that human agency – i.e. our governments – were wholly unable to have wrung a scintilla of victory from this war. Recriminations will multiply. If death has retreated – finally it will be because nature, and biology, willed it. There is, of course, human agency – but there are other forces at work in this Cosmos of ours, that can make human Promethean hubris appear pathetic.

  It was just such insight that so unsettled Seville, in Dostoevsky’s allegory. The extraneous ‘intrusion’ into their city jerked into consciousness half-forgotten memories of what it is to be fully human, and recalled a different mode of human potential. Intimations of mortality, often do that trick (too), of course.

  What follows will be a more hesitant, cautious world. Shocked economically, and at our root we will, I suspect, be much more careful in the future: credit cards will be cut in two; we will try to save more, and we will adapt ‘downwards’. Will we go out and spend liberally? A pent-up ‘jump in sentiment’? No. The experience for all has been chastening. Who now sees the future with any certainty? Every aspect of life is going to be changed. Some of the smaller businesses will open, but many will remain shut. Many of us will continue to work from home. Many of us won’t work at all – and may never work again.

  But what seems to be searing the public consciousness is of a different mode: Empathy during the pandemic – there was none. (Recall the comments how Covid-19 striking down Hubei would be good for America). Solidarity – there was none (at least from the EU, to be sure); Leadership – there was none, yet semi-legal corruption – abundant. Trump has taken charge of the U.S. Treasury, which in turn, now fully controls the dollar printing presses of the Fed. Trump is King Dollar. He can print whatever he likes. Give it to whomsoever he wants (via the Treasury’s secretive Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs)), outsourced to Blackrock Fund. The U.S. Budget now is toast.

  As one banker noted:

  “Would you want to be a Democratic candidate running against [a Trump] spending USD2 trillion on infrastructure in a weak economy? Good luck with that!”

  Eyes wide open: Where is our moral compass – as well as our common humanity?

  The mask is off: Is this the point of inflection for the global order, when the western hyper-financialised system is unable to reform itself, refuses to reform itself – and yet is unable to sustain itself, as it once was?

  Will the system – so busily engaged in looking after itself – even notice that the world doesn’t believe in it anymore, not even one jot?

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 22:20

• "Sickest Part Of A Sick America": The Region Where Health Officials Fear The Worst COVID-19 Devastation
  “Sickest Part Of A Sick America”: The Region Where Health Officials Fear The Worst COVID-19 Devastation

  After New Orleans last month emerged as the United States’ new southern epicenter for the coronavirus pandemic, threatening other states across the region, a review in Bloomberg Law of how the South as already “the sickest part of America” could be hit hardest before the crisis eventually wanes paints a very bleak picture.

  Home to the highest rates of obesity, hypertension, heart attacks, and strokes, combined with expansive rural and impoverished areas that have poor health care access, the South is especially vulnerable for a “virus that is particularly lethal for people with underlying health conditions,” according to the report. 

  “Covid-19 is going to be a disaster in the Southeast,” Aaron Milstone, a Tennessee pulmonologist, told Bloomberg Law. “We’ll see higher morbidity, which is getting sick from the virus, and higher mortality, which is dying from the virus.”

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  Further, the report reads, “Four of the five states with the highest diabetes rates are in the South. And eight didn’t expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving thousands of families without access to routine care, even as financially troubled rural hospitals wither away.”

  These are factors that might help explain the recent surprise explosion of cases in Louisiana, in addition of course to the fact that Mardis Gras – which ran in total from January 6 to Fat Tuesday on February 25 – witnessed one million plus tourists and revelers from outside states and countries descend on the Big Easy. Concerning Louisiana, Bloomberg Law observes further:

  That prediction is already playing out in Louisiana, which saw Covid-19 infections and deaths soar in New Orleans after weeks of Carnival celebrations ended last month. Of the 239 Covid-19 fatalities there, 40% had diabetes, 25% were obese and 21% had heart problems, according to state figures.

  The Bayou State saw another jump in coronavirus numbers Monday: more than 1,800 cases in a single day, to a total of 16,284 confirmed cases. Over 4,000 of these are in New Orleans.

  “We, in general, have a sicker population, and we are concerned that our outcomes in the Covid-19 pandemic are going to be worse because of that,” Joseph Kanter, an assistant state health officer, described.

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  Describing further of what the report dubs “the sickest part of the country,” it profiles the greater general vulnerability further:

  Those conditions run rampant in the South, according to the nonprofit United Health Foundation. For example, Mississippians are 85% more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than Minnesotans, and 41.9% of Arkansans have high blood pressure, compared with 24.5% in Utah, according to the organization’s America’s Health Rankings report. The region also has a large African-American population, which is disproportionately prone to the underlying conditions.

  The authors conclude the southern governors should have acted much faster to declare blanket ‘stay at home’ emergency orders state-wide, which some like Florida were very slow to do, and still with some hold-outs.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 22:00

• 270 Federal Inmates Infected With COVID-19 As US Prison Bureau Buys Massive Stockpile Of Trump's Favorite Drug: Live Updates
  270 Federal Inmates Infected With COVID-19 As US Prison Bureau Buys Massive Stockpile Of Trump’s Favorite Drug: Live Updates

  Summary:

  • Russia reports another concerning jump in cases
  • Downing Street offers update on Johnson’s condition
  • Abe kicks off Japan’s 1-month state of emergency
  • Spain reports jump in deaths following drop over the weekend
  • Wuhan lifts lockdown
  • US death toll tops 11k
  • Italy reports another deceleration in cases + deaths
  • Spanish deaths tick higher
  • NRA lays off 60 employees
  • UK reports deadliest day yet
  • BOP outbreak climbs to nearly 300 inmates infected
  • New York State reports biggest one-day jump in deaths with 731
  • Spain reports nearly 900 deaths
  • Germany reports another jump in deaths
  • France reports massive jump in deaths breaking above 10k; case total breaks above 100k
  • Global deaths pass 80k while recoveries pass 300k
  • Portugal reports, India reports
  • New Jersey also reports highest fatality numbers
  • The NRA lays off 60 employees
  • Italy reports lowest jump in cases in a month
  • ICU admissions, intubations down significantly in New York
  • US cases accelerate faster than Europe’s
  • US to try and block Iran’s IMF loan request
  • Turkey delivers COVID-19 update
  • Wuhan residents crowd train platforms as they’re finally allowed to leave after 10+ weeks
  • De Blasio says ventilator shortage is easing
  • Israel imposes Passover lockdown, Irish asked not to visit holiday homes for Easter
  • 55k expected to leave Wuhan by Wednesday evening (local time)
  • 12 NYPD officers have died of COVID-19
  • Trump admin officials jawbone market higher
  • Peterson poll shows 73% say COVID-19 has hit them in the pocketbook
  • India closes hospitals after cases confirmed
  • China reports no daily deaths for first time
  • German health ministry unveils app to help track COVID-19 patients
  • France prepares to ban jogging as lockdown tightens

  *    *    *

  Update (1930ET): The US is reportedly planning to intervene and block Iran’s request for a $5 billion IMF bailout. This, as Europe has started supplying Iran with aid via a vehicle it designed to try and keep the JCPOA intact by circumventing the US’s reach.

  *    *    *

  Update (1905ET): The US Bureau of Prisons reports that 241 federal inmates and 72 employees have tested positive for coronavirus. 34 prisons and 6 BOP halfway houses have been impacted so far.

  According to the Wayback machine’s archive of the BOP’s COVID-19 page, here’s the trajectory of the outbreak(s) so far:

  • 3/29: 19 inmates/19 staff
  • 4/2: 75 inmates/39 staff
  • 4/5: 138 inmates/59 staff
  • 4/6: 196 inmates/63 staff
  • 4/7: 241 inmates/72 staff

  And a map of the facilities.

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  Louisiana’s FCC Oakdale, the facility where the first outbreak was discovered, and where the most prisoners have tested positive, has 38 inmates who’ve tested positive so far.

  The ACLU has been filing lawsuits and injunctions to try and get more ‘nonviolent’ offenders at these facilities freed to save them from being exposed to the virus. In the suit, filed yesterday, the organization filed a lawsuit against Oakdale arguing that AG Barr’s decision to free some prisoners didn’t go far enough, because of the prison’s horrendous conditions.

  Meanwhile, earlier, we learned that the BOP recently purchased a sizable stockpile of President Trump’s favorite drug for the treatment of COVID-19: Hydroxychloroquine.

  The Bureau of Prisons Just Bought a Ton of Hydroxychloroquine, Trump’s COVID-19 Miracle Drug https://t.co/V3II60KSmt

  — Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) April 7, 2020

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  Apparently, the administration is trying to avoid repeats of what happened in NYC after Mayor de Blasio released hundreds of nonviolent offenders.

  *    *    *

  Update (1850ET): Gun sales are way, way, way up across the US, but apparently, business is not booming at America’s favorite lobbying organization, the NRA (remember the NRA’s not officially a lobbying organization and doesn’t describe itself that way).

  The layoffs stem from the fact that the NRA was forced to cancel its annual meeting, an event that typically nets it millions of dollars, Politico reports.

  *    *    *

  Update (1835ET): Germany just reported 4,312 new cases of coronavirus, and 210 new deaths, bringing its total to 107,663 cases, and 2,016 deaths. The 210 number is unusually high for Germany, which has consistently boasted one of the lowest mortality rates in Europe, even as deaths have crept upward in recent days.

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  It’s just another figure that makes one question the ‘good news’ narrative forming around Europe: Apparently, the market has it’s doubts, too.

  *    *    *

  Update (1800ET): Spain just reported its latest numbers: 6,910 new cases and 876 deaths, for a total of 141,942 and a death toll of 14,045. That’s roughly consistent with the recent “plateau”.

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  Meanwhile, President Trump kept up the optimistic jawboning during his press conference by claiming that the US death toll might be smaller than expected.

  *    *    *

  Update (1750ET): Trump & Co. are delivering Tuesday evening’s press conference. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, thousands of residents of Wuhan are waking up and getting ready for what might be a dash to the train station as a state rail operator said it expects 55k people to leave Wuhan by end of day Wednesday.

  *    *    *

  Update (1650ET): We have new numbers out of Portugal, India

  Portugal reported 712 new cases, and 34 new deaths, bringing its totals to 12,442 cases and 345 deaths. India reports 573 new cases of coronavirus and 26 new deaths, bringing the countrywide total to 5,351 cases and 160 deaths, minuscule numbers that help feed speculation that the Indian government is covering up the true extent of the outbreak. On Tuesday, the number of cases in Mumbai, home to some densely populated slums, saw a notable jump

  While the global death toll topped 80k on Tuesday, the number of recovered coronavirus patients also reached a new milestone: 300k worldwide.

  *    *    *

  Update (1521ET): Spain just followed up some more encouraging data out of Italy with another disappointment. Spain’s pace of coronavirus deaths ticked up for the first time in five days on Tuesday, with 743 people succumbing overnight, but there was still hope the national lockdown might be eased soon.

  Tuesday’s toll from the health ministry compared to 637 deaths registered during the previous 24 hours, taking the total to 13,798, the second highest in the world after Italy. Still, the proportional daily increase of 5.7% was about half that reported a week ago.

  The government dismissed the jump as a normal “oscillation”, and blamed it on some delayed notifications from over the weekend.

  “It is normal to have some oscillations…What matters is to see the trend and the cumulative data,” Maria Jose Sierra, deputy chief of health emergencies, told Reuters.

  *    *    *

  Update (1500ET): Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tweeted that he’s working with Nancy Pelosi to try and add another $250 billion to the ‘Paycheck Protection Program’ capital after Bank of America received applications asking for roughly one-tenth of the total amount allotted for all the banks in just a few days.

  At the direction of President @realDonaldTrump, I’ve spoken with @SenateMajLdr, @SenSchumer, @SpeakerPelosi, and @GOPLeader to secure an additional $250 billion for the #PPPLoan program to make sure small businesses get the money they need!

  — Steven Mnuchin (@stevenmnuchin1) April 7, 2020

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  Congress is also working to prepare a 4th coronavirus bill, which would essentially be the second installment of its massive bailouts for workers, SMEs and select industries.

  *     *      *

  Update (1450ET): As the spring holidays near, millions around the world getting used to the idea of spending it alone, or with immediate family only. Benjamin Netanyahu has imposed a nationwide curfew and lockdown for the Passover holiday, one of the most important holidays of the year, and over in Ireland, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar urged citizens not to visit holiday homes or caravan parks in the coming Easter holiday weekend.

  *    *    *

  Update (1430ET): NJ just followed New York by reporting its largest single-day jump in deaths yet. The state reported more than 200 deaths on Tuesday.

  “We’re in the fight of our lives,” Governor Phil Murphy said at a press briefing.

  The state reported 229 new deaths, bringing the state total to 1,232 deaths and reported 3,326 new cases, bringing the total to 44,416.

  France, meanwhile, has definitively joined the UK in bucking the broader trend in Western Europe by reporting some more alarming data, including its largest one-day jump in deaths. The country reported 1,417 new deaths, bringing the total to 10,328. France reported another 11,059 new cases, bringing its total to 109,069, breaking above 100k, becoming only the third country in Europe with more than 100k cases. The country’s death toll also broke above 10k, a feat that has also only been accomplished by Italy, Spain and the US. Iran is on the cusp of 10k according to its official figures, but most suspect that both Iran and China have seen thousands of deaths that have gone unreported.

  Italy, meanwhile, reported 3,039 new cases and 604 deaths, bringing its totals to 135,586 cases, and 17,127 deaths. It was the largest batch of cases in a month.

  *    *    *

  Update (1245ET): After more than 10 weeks trapped inside their homes, and then trapped inside their city, residents of Wuhan were finally allowed to leave the city on Tuesday. NYT reported that train platforms in the city were packed beyond capacity as residents scrambled to leave.

  Meanwhile, Turkey reported 3,892 new cases, bringing total to 34,109, while its death toll rises to 725 with 76 new fatalities.

  *    *    *

  Update (1210ET): Both the pace of deaths and new cases continued to slow in Italy on Tuesday as the Civil Protection Service reported 604 new deaths, a 3.7% increase, compared to yesterday’s 4% jump. Italy’s death toll is now at 17,127.

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  Across the country, officials reported just 3,039 new cases, bringing Italy’s total to 135,586.

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  *    *    *

  Update (1130ET): For the third day in a row, the UK has emerged as a disappointing standout among the European countries with the highest confirmed case totals by reporting another jump in deaths, along with a jump in new cases.

  The UK reported 786 deaths, its deadliest day yet, bringing its death toll to 6,236; the UK has confirmed more than 51K cases.

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  The pace of new cases declined, driving the UK’s mortality rate to 12.1%, a new record. The Health Ministry also reported a drop in testing.

  *    *    *

  Update (1100ET): New York State just reported its biggest one-day jump in COVID-19 deaths, and a modest decline in new cases, quashing the optimistic narrative that President Trump has been pushing. The state also reported more than 8k new cases, bringing its total to 138,836.

  For the second day in a row, Gov. Cuomo said the data appear to show that the state has reached a “plateau”. On Tuesday, New York State reported  731 deaths, bringing its total to 5,489.

  The dynamic – jump in deaths but drop deceleration in new cases – caused the state’s mortality rate to inch higher to ~4%.

  Holding a briefing with updates on #Coronavirus. WATCH LIVE: https://t.co/fTaNJGMaPn

  — Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 7, 2020

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  Hospitalizations have continued to climb, with another big jump on Tuesday…

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  …but the good news is that ICU admissions and intubations have fallen significantly over the past few days, suggesting that the state won’t need those additional ventilators after all.

  Intubations and ICU admissions are down significantly in New York. #CoronaVirusUpdate pic.twitter.com/wEeWN88Yiz

  — Brian Marschhauser (@editorbrian) April 7, 2020

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  A roundup:

  New York’s update:

  – Number of new cases down
  – Record number of new deaths
  – Number of new hospitalizations up
  – Number of new ICU patients down
  – Number of new intubations down
  – Number of newly discharged patients up

  — Norbert Elekes (@NorbertElekes) April 7, 2020

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  New York’s ‘peak’ – the point at which the number of daily deaths and reported cases hits its highest level – is supposed to arrive this week.

  And FYI:

  ⚠️NYC deaths are still soaring, not decreasing! As earlier predicted by health economist @andreafeigl1, NYC weekend death drops are not real trend, only to tick up again during weekdays. Never trust a weekend death count due to well known reporting lulls. #COVID19 https://t.co/jHKi7tO14F

  — Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) April 7, 2020

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  *    *    *

  Update (1015ET): During a live press briefing unveiling a program to allow NYC school students and their families to access free food, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged that the city’s shortage of ventilators has eased somewhat in recent days.

  Watch the rest here:

  I’m at PS 1 in Manhattan to thank School Food Service Workers keeping New Yorkers fed during the COVID-19 crisis. https://t.co/R8nYmt63F8

  — Mayor Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 7, 2020

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  Meanwhile, earlier, deaths n the US topped 11K (11,008 exactly)./

  *    *    *

  Update (1000ET): A recent survey carried out on behalf of the FT and Peter G Peterson Foundation found that 73% of Americans said they’ve lost money as a result of the pandemic.

  Of those, 24% said their household income had fallen “very significantly”.

  While the NYT, WaPo and the Guardian have been harping relentlessly on how the outbreak is overwhelmingly harming America’s most vulnerable, including the poor and minorities, the survey found that higher-earning workers were about as likely to be impacted as workers with relatively low salaries.

  In a sign of how widespread the pandemic’s economic impact has become, almost as many families making more than $100,000 a year reported a hit to their income (71 per cent), as those making less than $50,000 (74 per cent).

  While data has shown that poorer New Yorkers were significantly more likely to be ‘essential’ workers, and more likely to get sick, that dynamic isn’t as prevalent outside New York City, and other massively unequal coastal urban strongholds, and the American middle class and even wealthy Americans have been impacted, sometimes badly, placing them on the cusp of losing homes or other disasters. Remember, a record 10 million Americans filed for unemployment  during the last two weeks of March.

  *    *    *

  Update (0900ET): As senior Trump Administration officials fan out across the major market-news channels to try and keep the market’s fire burning with some well-timed and appropriately un-subtle jawboning, both Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow have insisted that President Trump is looking to re-open the US economy “as quickly as possible” – though not before health officials have had their say.

  Kudlow took things a step further by dismissing worries about another drop to new lows by saying the Fed is sitting pretty with “the ultimate bazooka”, alluding to their ability to buy stocks, something we have long warned about, warnings which have occasionally been dismissed as “conspiracy theories.”

  Of course, speculating about CBs buying equities is anything but a ‘conspiracy’, as the BoJ has shown us. And now, some very credible people are talking about the Fed buying stocks after the central bank already took the unprecedented step of buying corporate debt.

  *    *    *

  Update (0845ET): As Austria and Germany edge toward the beginning of the process of reopening their economies, Beijing has offered its 2 cents on their decision via the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, one of their most visible English-language mouthpieces.

  Some European countries are planning to resume economic activity. It’s too early. China is yet to reopen its entertainment sector like cinemas and is working hard to cut off transmission chains of imported cases. Europe is not ready for large-scale work resumption anytime soon.

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) April 7, 2020

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  Hu Xijin also has some ‘thoughts’ on Trump slamming China for allegedly blocking shipments of PPE and other medical supplies, drugs and products.

  Some European countries are planning to resume economic activity. It’s too early. China is yet to reopen its entertainment sector like cinemas and is working hard to cut off transmission chains of imported cases. Europe is not ready for large-scale work resumption anytime soon.

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) April 7, 2020

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  *    *    *

  Just as we suspected as we watched futures surge out of the gate on Sunday evening, the drop in New York’s reported deaths that filled investors (not to mentioned President Trump) with hope that a week which Surgeon General Jerry Adams had said would be like ‘Pearl Harbor, but across the entire country’ might not be all that devastating.

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  Unfortunately, those numbers now appear to have simply a blimp, based on a quirk in data collection and presentation, as one medical researcher pointed out yesterday.

  Even after New York reported a promising three-day streak of declines in hospitalizations and intubations related to COVID019, across the US, the outbreak worsened on Monday as more cases were reported in the US than all of Europe. Overall, there were 73,135 cases of COVID-19 confirmed, bringing the global total to roughly 1.35 million as of Tuesday morning. Deaths rose slightly as well on Monday, as 5,227 people lost their lives around the world, bringing the ‘official’ death toll to 74,799. After Sunday’s drop in new cases, the US once again reported more than 30,000 new cases on Monday, with New York State being the hardest hit, adding nearly 9,000 cases and 600 fatalities. 10 other states reported a daily jump of more than 1k cases. While Europe is finally seeing signs that its lockdowns are working, for the US, with roughly a dozen states still with no mandatory stay at home order in place, it’s still too early, according to the FT.

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  That said, some European states are doing better than others. Spain, which reported a drop in deaths over the weekend, saw them bounce back early Tuesday, reporting 743 deaths for Monday, bringing its total to nearly 14k.

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  After Germany leaked plans that call for the economy to start reopening later this month, and Austria announced that some shops could reopen as early as next week, the French government is apparently preparing to ban outdoor jogging.

  All physical exercise – running, walking – will be banned in Paris between 10am and 7pm from tomorrow (Wed April 8) as part of ever stricter Coronavirus lockdown, by order Paris Police Prefecture & city council…Aim is to keep crowds down. What about pre-10am & post-7pm crowds?

  — Peter Allen (@peterallenparis) April 7, 2020

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  While US testing has improved remarkably since the failings of early last month, former FDA head Scott Gottlieb, a prominent public expert who has been widely quoted in the press since the outbreak began, warned on Tuesday that Texas and Georgia are still notably under-testing, which needs to be corrected.

  Texas and Georgia are not testing enough, says @ScottGottliebMD on #COVID19. “When you see a lot of hospitalizations but not a lot of people testing positive in a state it is an indication that they are under testing and both those states are in that bucket.” pic.twitter.com/w7HGYqdFLp

  — Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) April 7, 2020

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  As New York struggles, CNN reported that 12 NYPD officers have died from COVID-19, roughly half the number of NYPD officers who died on 9/11.

  Crossing another major milestone off its list, China’s NHC reported a drop in new cases Tuesday morning to 32 from 39 the day before (all of which were travel-related, it said), along with zero new deaths for the first time since Beijing began releasing daily updates in late January. Total case and death toll reported for China have risen to 81,740 and 3,331, respectively, as of April 6.

  Also notable: The first day of zero deaths just happened to coincide with the lifting of Wuhan’s lockdown, which happened on Tuesday, meaning that millions of Wuhan residents are finally free after months under quarantine.

  A BBC correspondent working on the Mainland pointed out that while this milestone is being widely reported in the European press, in China, the state-backed media seem to not be playing it up. Is that because there’s an implicit understanding at this point that the public knows Beijing is lying about the daily numbers, and really doesn’t care? Who knows, but at this point, the total case and death totals reported out of China don’t really matter any more. And the fact remains that, even as Beijing embraces targeted lockdowns in some areas, the overall trend shows China is mostly in the clear – even as the virus will likely persist on some level.

  #China has officially reported zero new #coronavirus deaths today! A thread…

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  #China has reported zero new deaths today! It’s the first time since the 21st of January when the National Health Commission started publishing daily #coronavirus figures (Official figures usual caveats). It doesn’t matter whether or not I “believe” the number because…

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  While a “milestone” day with zero official #coronavirus deaths, the most important thing in #China is the trend. There’s a mountain of evidence to show that the trend in #China is real. Doesn’t matter if overall infections are 10 x the official figure, the curve is what matters.

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  Would #China‘s Communist Party elite allow thousands of people to travel from #Hubei (the origin of the #coronavirus outbreak and worst hit province) to where they live in the Chinese capital if they didn’t think it was safe?

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  I don’t know a single person in #China (I don’t even know anybody who knows anybody in #China) who’s contracted the #coronavirus. I hardly know anybody in #NewYork and #London but I do know people in both those cities with #covid19.

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  Interestingly, #China’s Communist Party controlled media is not reporting the first 24-hours without #coronavirus fatalities with any great fanfare. The subject isn’t even a key trending subject on Chinese social media platforms.

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  It was the same when we had the first day with no new home-grown #China #coronavirus infections. It was buried in #China‘s Communist Party media. If you weren’t paying very close attention to the evening 7pm TV news you would’ve missed it. We’ll see tonight re zero deaths.

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  This either means #China‘s media outlets know all too well that there are flaws in the accounting here or, more likely, that the Party knows there are flaws in its accounting so it’s ordered a cautious presentation of zero #coronavirus deaths in its media. #covid19

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  This also comes with #Wuhan, the city where the global #coronavirus crisis first started – about to open again to the outside world in coming hours. #covid19 #China

  — Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) April 7, 2020

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  Take from that what you will.

  The government in New Delhi has embraced an increasingly paranoid approach to the outbreak in recent weeks, prompting PM Modi to declare a three-week lockdown that gave India’s 1.3 billion residents with just hours to prepare, leaving many of the country’s poor in the lurch. But as they struggle to prevent outbreaks in some of the country’s most densely packed slums, BBC reports that three hospitals in two of India’s largest cities – the capital, Delhi, and Mumbai – have been shut after staff tested positive. No one is allowed to enter or leave, and staff will only be allowed to return home once they’ve tested negative. In Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai, more than 50 staff members have tested positive. And in Jaslok Hospital, a well-known private hospital in the city, more than 10 nurses tested positive on Monday.

  Further north, more worrying news emerged out of Moscow Tuesday morning, as Russia’s COVID-19 task force reported 1,154 new coronavirus cases, the largest daily jump yet and the first time the Russian daily total has topped 1k, while another 11 deaths brought the country’s total to 58. Russia’s total of 7,497 cases of Covid-19 is fewer than other major European countries, but the virus has continued to steadily accelerate even after the Kremlin extended Russia’s country-wide “holiday” (a strict lockdown) until the end of April.

  From Beijing, to Singapore, to Silicon Valley, the coronavirus has given governments an excuse to test out new surveillance tactics in the name of ‘contact tracing’ and outbreak suppression. Now, Germany is getting in on the action by promoting a health tracking app released by Germany’s federal health agency that can alert health officials to possible signs of COVID-19.

  Per the FT:

  Germany’s federal health agency has unveiled a coronavirus-tracking app that links to fitness bands and smartwatches, which it says will help map the spread of Covid-19 by monitoring anonymised data for tell-tale signs of infection. The app asks for permission to access users’ approximate location, and data including resting pulse, sleep and activity levels, which tend to change significantly in the case of acute respiratory diseases. The Robert Koch Institute developed the app in conjunction with Thryve, a Berlin start-up. “If the number of symptomatic patients can be recorded in a sufficiently large sample, this could help us to draw conclusions earlier on the occurrence of infection, distribution and also the effectiveness of the measures taken,” said Professor Lothar Wieler, president of the Robert Koch Institute.

  Since the early weeks of the epidemic, the general peer-reviewed medical journal “The Lancet” has become widely known outside of the usual medical circles as a source of the latest research on the novel coronavirus. A study published this week in the magazine found that school closures have a limited impact on the spread of coronavirus and should be more rigorously weighed against their serious economic impact, according to a study by researchers at University College London. Data from 16 studies on the Sars outbreak and other coronaviruses in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore suggest that school closures did not contribute to the control of the epidemic, concluded the researchers in a paper published in The Lancet on Tuesday.

  The Iranian military – which is a wholly separate entity from the IRGC – has cancelled a military parade that had been scheduled for later this month, saying it will instead push the soldiers to help with the outbreak.

  Also: After announcing plans to declare a month-long ‘state of emergency’ in 7 provinces (including Tokyo), Japanese PM Abe did just that when he officially announced the plan on Tuesday morning, a move that had been widely telegraphed in advance. Though Japan’s constitution doesn’t allow the government to hand out punishments for violators, it has asked non-essential businesses and schools to close, while ‘essential’ businesses like banks and grocers to remain open. His government has also announced plans for a stimulus package worth nearly $1 trillion.

  Finally, last night, Downing Street shocked the world when it announced that UK PM Boris Johnson had been moved to the ICU “as a precaution” after experiencing some heightened difficulty breathing. After doctors started to speculate that he would very likely be placed on a ventilator, the government decided to re-examine its decision not to provide complete transparency to the press, and instead leaked a report to the London Times offering more details about Johnson’s condition with one critical admission: Doctor’s said Johnson wasn’t in bad enough shape to warrant being admitted to the ICU under normal circumstances, but given the novelty of the virus, and Johnson’s importance, he was moved as a precaution.

  Meanwhile, ministers are demanding to know more about the government’s contingency planning as for who will be responsible for critical national security duties, including the handling of the UK’s nuclear deterrent. So far, Dominic Raab, Johnson’s foreign secretary, has been deputized to step up if Johnson becomes incapacitated.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 21:55

• Max Keiser: Selling Bitcoin Now For "Fiat Debt-Coupons" Is A Crime
  Max Keiser: Selling Bitcoin Now For “Fiat Debt-Coupons” Is A Crime

  Authored by William Suberg via CoinTelegraph.com,

  Bitcoin will be the only exit from the “global reset” of finance which will allow central banks to even destroy the banking system itself.

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  image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

  That was just one conclusion from Simon Dixon, CEO of cryptocurrency funding platform BnkToTheFuture, in the latest episode of financial news program the Keiser Report on April 7. 

  Dixon: “World’s largest regulated Ponzi scheme” is dying

  Discussing the global coronavirus epidemic and its impact on global finance, Dixon warned that the health aspect of the crisis was by no means its worst.

  “I don’t want to be dramatic, but this is a global reset in the financial system,” he told host Max Keiser.

  Coming after, he said, was a massive “scrambling” for power by governments and central banks. Taxpayers and those forced to rely on fiat money will pay the price.

  Dixon continued:

  “I think we’re going to see a real attack from central banks on traditional banks as we inevitably experience the ginormous consequences of essentially the world’s largest regulated Ponzi scheme.”

  After coronavirus: “A horrible, worse version of fiat currency”

  The theory argues that central lending institutions will allow banks to die and instead allow citizens to open digital currency accounts directly with them. 

  As a result, control of money, and hence people who are forced to use it, will become so easy that the world will enter what Keiser describes as “neo-feudalism.” 

  The birth of this dire state of affairs will be helped by coronavirus — banning cash because of concerns over infection is one such example.

  “You’re going to end up with a very, very horrible, worse version of fiat currency to the one we have now, created by banks as debt,” Dixon continued.

  As Cointelegraph reported, Keiser as well is no stranger to warning consumers about the unavoidable collapse of fiat hegemony.

  “I have a moral responsibility to keep my 2011 #BTC HODL’ed,” he tweeted over the weekend. 

  “To legitimize any fiat debt-coupons in any way now… When we are on the edge of victory, would be a crime against humanity.”

  Last week, Keiser likened gold to “toilet paper for the rich” as the industry underwent a severe liquidity squeeze. Bitcoin, he and many others contend, is the “hardest” money that has ever existed.

  Cointelegraph has additionally touched on the characteristics which serve to make Bitcoin a much safer long-term investment than gold.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 21:40

• Michael 'Big Short' Burry Blasts "Unjustifiable" Lockdowns As "Most Devastating Economic Force In History"
  Michael ‘Big Short’ Burry Blasts “Unjustifiable” Lockdowns As “Most Devastating Economic Force In History”

  Infamous for his painful but ultimately profitable “big short” bet against mortgage-backed securities during the 2008 financial crisis, Michael Burry, the doctor-turned-hedge-fund-manager has been on a multi-day Twitter rant claiming that the lockdowns intended to contain the COVID-19 pandemic are worse than the disease itself.

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  Echoing the thoughts of many, Burry opined in a series of tweets over the past two weeks that the government-enforced lockdowns and business shutdowns across America may trigger one of the country’s deepest-ever economic contractions, and further still, are not necessary to contain the epidemic (on March 22nd).

  COVID-19 policy cannot be settled by CYA politicians career ID docs. Too much hammer/nail and too little common sense. 

  POTUS must reflect the interests of the working class and small business here – the economy cannot crash 30% to save the 0.2%.

  Set America Free!

  If COVID-19 testing were universal, the fatality rate would be less than 0.2%.

  This is no justication for sweeping government policies, lacking any and all nuance, that destroy the lives, jobs, and businesses of the other 99.8%.

  Furthermore, Burry – who earned his M.D. at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine – has also dared to say that some controversial treatments for COVID-19, such as the malaria drug hydroxycloroquine, should be made more widely available (on March 24).

  Prudent plan:

  1) Standardize on chloroquine and azithromycin -cheap and available

  2) Sick and elderly voluntarily shelter in place. 

  3) Americans lead their normal lives with extra hand washing and special care if around elderly.

  Saving the economy means life, not murder.

  Additionally, in an email to Bloomberg News, Burry wrote that “universal stay-at-home is the most devastating economic force in modern history… And it is man-made. It very suddenly reverses the gains of underprivileged groups, kills and creates drug addicts, beats and terrorizes women and children in violent now-jobless households, and more. It bleeds deep anguish and suicide.“

  Additionally, as Bloomberg’s Reed Stevenson reports, Burry responded to questions via email to offer more thoughts on the pandemic and the response to the outbreak…

  How the Pandemic Happened

  “This is a new form of coronavirus that emanated from a country, China, that unfortunately covered it up. That was the original sin. It transmits very easily, and within the first month it was likely all over the world. Very poor testing infrastructure created an information vacuum as cases ramped, ventilator shortages were projected. Politicians panicked and media filled the space with their own ignorance and greed. It was a toxic mix that led to the shutdown of the U.S., and hence much of the world economy.”

  “In hindsight, each country should have immediately ramped up rapid field testing of at-risk groups. But as I understand it, the CDC was tasked with some of this, and botched it, and other departments were no better. The bureaucracy failed in a good number of countries. Turf wars and incompetence has ruled the day. So the political cover for that failure on the part of the technocrats and politicians is a very harsh stay-at-home policy.”

  The U.S. Policy Response

  “If there was ever a time for the government to stimulate with fiscal and monetary policy, it is now. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been adding $3 for every $1 of new GDP over a very long time, and interest rates were already near zero. Still, nothing is more important now that loans to small and mid-sized businesses, and the U.S. Treasury, backed by the Fed, is providing that liquidity, which is vital.”

  Potential Treatments

  “It’s pretty clear that hydrochloroquine is doing something good for many Covid-19 patients. The standard in medicine is a placebo-controlled double-blind study. But there is no time for that. The technocrats at the top are getting this wrong. Do the studies, make the vaccines, but allow doctors to have what they feel is working now. Don’t take tools or drugs out of the treating doctors’ hands. Trump should use the Defense Production Act more liberally in this area.”

  “A more nuanced approach would be for at risk groups — the obese, old and already-sick — to shelter in place, to execute widespread mandatory testing, and to ID and track as necessary while allowing society to function. Again, Trump should get the massive contract manufacturers like Flextronics to make testing machines.”

  Getting Back to Normal

  “I would lift stay-at-home orders except for known risk groups. We already know certain conditions that are predictive of severe disease. Especially since young healthy lungs tend to be resistant, I would let the virus circulate in the population that is not likely to get severe disease from it. This is the only path that comes close to balancing the needs of all groups. Vaccines are not coming anytime soon, so natural immunity is the only way out for now. Every day, every week in the current situation is ruining innumerable lives in a criminally unjust manner.”

  “When it comes to vaccines, coronaviruses are not known for imparting enduring immunity, and this will be one big challenge. It seems the genetic code is relatively conserved, and this will help the development of the vaccine. But we’re still looking at the end of the year. In the meantime, the world is an innovative place, and I expect many effective treatments — both new and repurposed — shortly. The question then will be regulation, expense and availability.”

  “Medically, the new normal will be the old normal. As long as innovation continues, medicine will conquer everything in our way.”

  Japan’s Response

  “I believe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying his best to manage through the situation without shuttering the economy. He sees what it has done to the U.S., and would rather not force a shut in, but instead asks for common sense. Japan has certain features — such as a largely lawful and well-educated society — that make this more possible. As do Taiwan, Singapore, Korea.”

  Business Recovery

  “Economically speaking, we have to realize the policy-driven demand shock will be resolved by 2021. But Japan and the U.S. are putting more than 20% of the GDP into new fiscal stimulus, and easy money will be the rule. Those things will all bring stock and debt markets back.”

  “Countries will also look to bring supply chains home, and many employees will need retraining with higher cost. When we start working and playing again, inflation may be in store. The other big point is that consumers have learned new behaviors, which will drive business churn.”

  Finally, on the investment side, Burry told Bloomberg News last month that he placed a “significant bearish market bet that is working out for now,” without providing details except to say it was a trade of a “good size” against indexes. He said the pandemic could unwind the passive investment boom, which he has compared to purchases of collateralized debt obligations that fueled the pre-2008 mortgage bubble.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 21:22

• Yale Students Demand Automatic 'Pass' Due To COVID-19
  Yale Students Demand Automatic ‘Pass’ Due To COVID-19

  Students at Yale are demanding a “universal pass” this semester due to coronavirus, after the college switched to virtual classes. This means no grades, deadlines or benchmarks for the Ivy League students, according to Yale grad Esteban Elizondo in a New York Post Op-Ed.

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  As representatives of one of America’s most important institutions, I assumed Yale students would rise to the occasion and lead their communities during a crisis. Instead, they see an international health disaster as an opportunity to nullify the one meritocratic standard the college has left: grades.

  Their call for a Universal Pass betrays a mindset spreading among too many Yale students: “I should be shielded from every crisis.”

  Any trouble in the world is apparently too great an emotional load for my peers to bear. Parkland shooting? Time to walk out of class. Climate change? Let’s have a school-wide “strike.” Coronavirus? Just cancel grades. That’s the only solution. –New York Post

  According to Elizondo, Yale – “led by mollycoddler-in-chief Peter Salovey” – is feeding a defeatist mentality which trains students to expect that the university will drop academic standards at the drop of a hat. After President Trump was elected, for example, professors bent the knee when students demanded midterms be canceled due to their mental health.

  Instead of a “universal pass,” Yale administration has offered students the option of a “Pass/Fail” grading system – but the students, including the Yale College Council Senate, are still demanding that every student be given a the no-questions-asked, no-effort-required universal pass where everyone gets a “P.”

  Harvard, meanwhile, has adopted an Emergency Satisfactory/Emergency Unsatisfactory (SEM/UEM) grading system for spring semester.

  Universal Pass, unsurprisingly, has been framed as a fight for low-income students. Infantilizing the disadvantaged is a typical activist behavior at Yale. Whether protestors are “striking” because of climate change’s effect on indigenous communities or pushing for the nullification of grades because a slipping economy will harm low-income students, the demands of elite Yalies always conveniently line up with those of the underprivileged.

  But, in reality, this latest crusade is just an excuse to do less work and abolish academic standards altogether. In my four years at Yale, I was consistently shocked by the creative excuses used by my peers to skip classes and exams. It’s quite brilliant, really — get out of class and virtue signal by arguing it’s a way to “advocate” for low-income students. I wish I had that type of ingenuity in second grade. You can only fake a stomachache so many times. –New York Post

  Elizondo argues that the Universal Pass actually hurts disadvantaged students by “ending their ability to distinguish themselves based on merit,” while helping rich kids with connections pursue postgraduate opportunities, as prestigious employers and top-tier grad schools are more likely to overlook a ‘passing’ grade during a difficult time.

  The author concludes by suggesting that the real motives for easing standards have nothing to do with coronavirus at all.

  “What students really want is to jettison grading permanently so they don’t have to work so hard. It’s nothing but laziness and virtue signaling disguised as activism.“

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 21:20

• US Confirms Deployment Of Patriot Missiles In Iraq
  US Confirms Deployment Of Patriot Missiles In Iraq

  Via Southfront.org,

  On April 5, a series of large explosions rocked the village of al-Kastan in southwestern Idlib injuring 8 people, including 3 members of the so-called White Helmets. According to local sources, an ammunition depot located in the civilian area inside the city became the source of the explosion.

  Al-Kastan is located near the town of Jisr al-Shughur, controlled by the Al-Qaeda-linked Turkistan Islamic Party. The exploded weapon depot likely belonged to the terrorist group or persons affiliated with it.

  On the same day, the Turkish military established three new ‘observation posts’ around Jisr al-Shughur. They are located at the villages of Baksariya, al-Z’ainiyah and Furaykah. Idlib militants see Turkish positions as an important defense line that would allow containing possible Russia- and Iran-backed anti-terrorist operations in the area.

  The 46th Regiment Base of the Syrian Army in western Aleppo came under Turkish artillery shelling. In response, Syrian forces struck position of Turkish-backed militants near Kafr Amma. The attack on the 46th Regiment Base became a third incident between the Turkish military and Syrian troops in less than a week. On April 3, two Syrian soldiers were killed in a Turkish artillery strike on their positions near Tell Abyad.

  On April 4, Iraq’s largest resistance groups released a joint statement calling the US military “occupation forces” that “respect the language of force only”. In the statement, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada, Kata’ib al-Imam Ali, Harakat al-Awfiy’a, Saraya Ashura, Harakat Jund al-Imam and Saraya al-Khurasani added that recent attacks on US forces and facilities in Iraq were only a “minor response” to the US aggression and the decision to carry out full-scale attacks was not taken then.

  Two days earlier, on April 2, Usbat al-Tha’ireen, the armed group that claimed responsibility for rocket strikes on Camp Taji and other US positions, released a 3-minute long drone footage of the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily-fortified Green Zone. This is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, and is nearly as large as Vatican City.

  The US Central Command officially confirmed deployment of Patriot air defense systems in Iraq. However, the US military announced that it will not provide “ status updates as those systems come online” for security reasons. At least two Patriot batteries are now located in at the US military bases of Ayn al-Assad and Erbil. Two more Patriot batteries will reportedly be deployed soon.

  As part of its plan to redeploy forces to larger, more fortified bases, the US evacuated its troops from the al-Taqaddum Air Base in the province of al-Anbar. It became the fourth US military facility abandoned in Iraq within the last few weeks. The previous ones were located in al-Qaim, Kirkuk and al-Qayyarah.

  Iraqi sources say that the US actions demonstrate that Washington is preparing for a new round of military confrontation with Iran and its allies in the region. Recently, President Donald Trump stated that the US was expecting attacks by Iranian-led forces on US troops and facilities, claiming that Iran will ‘pay price’ for this. Following the statement, Iran deployed additional anti-ship missiles and multiple rocket launchers on the Qeshm Island in the Strait of Horumz.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 21:00

• Millions Of Workers Fired Over Zoom As 'Remote Layoffs' Become Part Of America's 'New Normal'
  Millions Of Workers Fired Over Zoom As ‘Remote Layoffs’ Become Part Of America’s ‘New Normal’

  A movie like the George Clooney-starring, Anna Kendrick-supported “Up In The Air” could have only been made during the depths of an economic crisis. The film focuses on a consulting firm that handles ‘firings’ mostly for large corporate clients. Most of these firings are handled in-person, until Kenrick’s character comes along with an innovation: A new video-conferencing technology that will allow the firm to start handling its ‘firings’ remotely.

  The new technology rankles George Clooney’s character, the firm’s most experienced consultant. Firing someone, as Clooney explains to Kendrick, requires taking them at their most vulnerable and “setting them adrift”. It’s a weighty, emotional and intense experience that should be handled in-person, if for no other reason than as a sign of respect: firing people remotely will simply cement the notion that these corporations truly don’t value their employees as “humans”, but merely as “resources.”

  Unfortunately, more than a decade later, the film’s vision of remote firings’ is finally becoming a reality.

  With roughly 60% of America’s workforce working from home, according to data by a national organization for HR managers, companies facing brutal business losses because of the COVID-19-induced recession have little choice by to deliver the news remotely, since bringing people back into the office just to be told to go home simply isn’t tenable. And paying to have a George Clooney-type consultant travel to their homes and deliver the news personally would just be…weird.

  The problem is that HR departments don’t have widespread protocols for firing by remote. This has resulted in thousands of awkward moments where workers found out about mass layoffs on an all-hands call, or with family members sitting around them.

  Ruthie Townsend didn’t think anything was amiss last week when she logged into her company’s standing staff meeting on Zoom, even though management at Pana, the business-travel-software startup where she worked, had warned the company might face serious challenges. But at the top of the videoconference call, employees at the Denver-based company were told they would soon receive either an email indicating that they were still employed, or an invite to another Zoom call at which severance details would be explained.

  Ms. Townsend, a 25-year-old sales rep, began furiously refreshing her email until the calendar invite appeared in her inbox. “I was already panicking,” she says. “I forgot if this is the one where I get laid off or I’m keeping my job.”

  When she logged into the next Zoom call and realized she was being laid off, she quickly muted herself and shut off her computer’s video camera; she says she was comforted to hear Pana was dedicating resources to help people find other work.

  The Palo Alto-based TripActions grabbed headlines after firing some 300 staff over Zoom.

  TripActions Inc., a corporate-travel startup based in Palo Alto, Calif. grabbed headlines last week as one of the first companies to enact a significant layoff – nearly 300 employees, or 25% of its staff – over Zoom. Ariel Cohen, the co-founder and chief executive, says there is no good way to let people go. He worried that talking to employees individually would create a situation where the sad news spread quickly and created anxiety before management could reach everyone.

  “Whether we do it over Zoom or face-to-face, the actual act is horrible,” Mr. Cohen says of the layoff.

  At this rate, in-person firings might soon become a thing of the past, as companies realize that firing employees remotely is simply easier and less risky. One human resources manager warned that people should be fired individually when possible, and warned in advance that a “difficult conversation” was about to ensue.

  Tracy Cote, chief people officer at human-resources-technology firm Zenefits, says if bad news has to be delivered to somebody working from home, managers should make sure that person understands a difficult conversation is coming so they can find a space that is at least semiprivate.

  “You don’t want to tell them they’re laid off in the middle of the kitchen with the family around,” she says.

  Pretty soon, companies will be handling mass firings by email, or – worse – by text.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 20:40

• "They Missed The Call" – Trump Plans To Withhold Money From WHO Over 'Botched' Crisis Response
  “They Missed The Call” – Trump Plans To Withhold Money From WHO Over ‘Botched’ Crisis Response

  Update (1810ET): After tweeting his criticism of the WHO earlier, President Trump brought up the NGO giant again during Tuesday night’s briefing, reiterating that there is a plan in place to withhold some American financing for the organization.

  The US is one of the WHO’s biggest backers, along with China.

  President Trump said Tuesday night that “we’re going to put a hold on money spent on the WHO.”

  He added that “they missed the call” on the coronavirus pandemic.

  Journalists swiftly whipped out some memos from January that the WHO issued warning about the potential devastation to be caused by the novel coronavirus, memos published at a time that Trump was still playing down the crisis.

  Of course, these ‘impartial reporters’ are ignoring the many criticisms and legitimate questions that have been raised about the WHOs motivations and objectives, along with the many mistakes it has been accused of making during the early weeks of the global response.

  Remember when the WHO dragged its feet on labeling the novel coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency, before doing the exact same thing before finally admitting that the COVID-19 is officially a major pandemic with no precedents in the last 100 years. Most notoriously, it supported Beijing’s claims that travel restrictions were ‘racist’, and claimed they were unnecessary during the early weeks of the outbreak.

  Here’s a reminder of who holds the purse strings…maybe Dr. Tedros can give it a look:

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  For many years, the assessed contribution for the US has been set at 22% of all member state assessed contributions, the maximum allowed rate. Over the last eight years, the US voluntary contributions have ranged from a low of $102 million in 2014 to a high of $401 million in 2017.

  Later, during the Q&A, Trump slammed the WHO again for criticizing his decision to stop arrivals from China, which Trump said will help save “hundreds of thousands of lives” which might be just a slight exaggeration.

   

  *    *     *

  In what was by far his harshest criticism of the international agency to date, President Trump slammed the WHO in a tweet, accusing it of doing the bidding of China while taking the US’s money, and hinted that he would be giving American funding to the organization “a good look”, a statement that certainly won’t sit well with Trump’s critics, who will accuse the president of slashing funding to a vital public health institution in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic.

  The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020

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  Though the WHO has been helpful in providing tests around the world, the agency has faced plenty of criticism for appearing to kowtow to Beijing and parrot its lies and propaganda.

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  Beijing also provides a solid chunk of the WHO’s funding, as the chart below shows:

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  Trump boasted that he did the right thing and ignored the WHO’s advice when he imposed his China travel ban, and as studies have shown in recent weeks, that was perhaps the best decision his administration made during the response so far.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 20:33

• Collapsing Liquidity During End-Of-Day Rebalancing Has Led In An Unprecedented Mispricing Of Options
  Collapsing Liquidity During End-Of-Day Rebalancing Has Led In An Unprecedented Mispricing Of Options

  For the second time in two weeks, today’s Market on Close rebalance announcement at 350pm ET wreaked havoc on stocks. As we showed earlier, the publication of a notice that there were over $2BN in stocks for sale sending the S&P lower by 40 points in an unprecedented single tick.

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  This followed a similar but inverse reaction on March 26, when news of a $7BN MOC buy imbalance sent the S&P higher by 40 points in seconds.

  Why is this happening? Simply, there is just no liquidity in the market, something we showed last week when we visualized the record bid-ask spread in the median S&P stock.

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  However, as it turns out, the collapse in equity liquidity which manifests itself in ever more violent moves during the end-of-day rebalancing, is having a far broader impact.

  According to Goldman’s John Marshall, single stock options prices have become overvalued as end-of-day re-balancing in a low liquidity market have exacerbated common measures of realized volatility. As the Goldman derivatives strategist explains, “realized volatility for the average stock appears 32 points higher than it is.” This is how Goldman quantified the impact of what it calls the “end of day realized volatility premium”:

  We calculate the “end-of-day realized volatility premium” to quantify the distortion driven by end-of-day re-balancing activity during the period of low liquidity over the past month. We use the difference between close-to-close volatility and volatility calculated with VWAP as a proxy for the “end-of-day realized volatility premium”. The average stock in the S&P Top 100 has experienced a realized volatility of 120% using close-to-close prices over the past month, but has had a realized volatility of 88% using a daily VWAP over the past month.

  This suggests an “end-of-day realized volatility premium” of 32%.

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  This is problematic as many market models, especially vol-targeting, use close-to-close volatility as a key input and are currently overestimating the fundamental volatility of stocks by 32% over this period. This has led to overpriced options across the volatility surface and inflated levels of risk aversion in volatility based risk models. In fact, Goldman finds that the ratio of 6-month implied volatility to 1 month realized volatility is positively correlated with this “end-of-day realized volatility premium” with a 30% R-squared across the names below.

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  One implication of this “rebalancing anomaly” is that typical measures of volatility are likely to decline faster than history would suggest according to Goldman, which expects close-to-close measures of volatility to decline faster than other metrics which incorporate intra-day data.

  This is likely to drive a decline in implied volatility across stocks and indexes that seems more rapid than casual observers of options would have expected. Several factors needed to be present for the “end-of-day realized volatility premium” to develop:

  (1) fundamental driver of uncertainty,

  (2) low liquidity environment, and

  (3) investment products which require end of day re-balancing.

  We believe the liquidity environment is likely to remain challenging; however, we see potential relief from #1 and #3. We believe there has been some reduction in investment products that require daily re-balancing as many of these investors have de-risked following the sell-off. While it is difficult to say exactly when fundamental uncertainty will decline, we know it will pass with time.

  Another implication is that single stock options are pricing moves over the next 6 months that are greater than moves YTD… which also means there is a way to profit from this peculiar arb.

  Straddles on the average S&P 100 stock are pricing a move of 25% over the next 6 months. This is 4% larger than their average absolute return year-to-date. For 67% of the names in this list, 6 month straddle prices are greater than their YTD absolute return. Selling straddles on these stocks implies profit if the stocks are in a 50% range of +/-25% over the next six months.

  Here, Goldman recommends selling straddles on names at the top of this list where the “end-of-day realized volatility premium” is the largest and likely to be inflating options prices. That said there is a risk, namely that straddle sellers risk 1-for-1 losses with stock moves in either direction that are greater than the premium collected.

  Finally, for those readers who are not as versed in the nuances of greeks trading, here is a brief appendix explaining How low liquidity has inflated realized volatility, and why is it important for stock and option investors?

  • Realized volatility is an input to many risk management and option pricing models. We believe low liquidity has had a significant and temporary impact on the end-of-day realized volatility metrics used by most models. We believe this leads investors to avoid buying stocks or selling options on stocks where the distortion is the greatest. This creates increased opportunity for investors.
  • How did the supply/demand of liquidity impact volatility over the past month? Demand for liquidity increased at the same time as the supply of liquidity decreased. Over the past six weeks, equity volatility has increased due to uncertainties related to COVID-19. The increase in fundamental volatility has had two effects; it has (1) increased demand for liquidity from investment products that need to re-balance based on market moves, (2) reduced the liquidity provided by market makers constrained by capital or regulatory rules. The liquidity pain point has been most acute at the close of each day, when many of the investment products demand liquidity as they re-balance (either by construction, due to regulations or by habit). This results in unusually large volatility at the close that is often reversed the next day; We have detailed this effect at the index level.
  • Should daily closing prices affect the value of derivatives more than intra-day price volatility? Daily closing prices explicitly determine the value of some derivatives, such as variance swaps; however, it is less clear whether the rise in end-of-day volatility should lead to significantly higher prices for put and call options. On one hand, market makers typically replicate puts and calls by hedging their delta risk (i.e. stock exposure) at the end of every day, so there is a practical link to the closing price. On the other hand, there is no requirement to hedge at the end of the day and many  investors hedge more frequently. We acknowledge that is likely that these end-of-day effects are important for valuing single stock options with a few days to expiration as they add to hedging risks.
  • Single stock options with more than a month to expiration should see less impact from these end-of-day effects. While the liquidity environment has become more difficult for options market makers that delta hedge each option, the environment has improved for fundamental investors that sell 6-month options for income (and do not delta hedge). The “end-of-day liquidity premium” has inflated options prices, but are unlikely to have a significant effect on the fundamental value of a stock at expiration in 6 months.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 04/07/2020 – 20:20

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