Coronavirus News 15 February 2020

Written by rjs, MarketWatch 666

The news posted for the Wuhan coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, has been surveyed and articles are summarized here. Although many countries have declared health emergencies, it remains unclear the exact threats presented by this new virus. So far the disease has been concentrated in China but there are cases scattered elsewhere through out the world. News items about economic affects of the virus are concentrated near the end of this article.

Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.

Silent Threat of the Coronavirus: America’s Dependence on Chinese Pharmaceuticals – As the new coronavirus, called 2019-nCoV, spreads rapidly around the globe, the international community is scrambling to keep up. Scientists rush to develop a vaccine, policymakers debate the most effective containment methods, and health care systems strain to accommodate the growing number of sick and dying. Though it may sound like a scene from the 2011 movie “Contagion,” it is actually an unfolding reality. In the midst of all of this, a potential crisis simmers in the shadows: The global dependence on China for the production of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment. Today, about 80% of pharmaceuticals sold in the U.S. are produced in China. This number, while concerning, hides an even greater problem: China is the largest and sometimes only global supplier for the active ingredient of some vital medications. The active ingredients for medicines that treat breast cancer and lung cancer and the antibiotic Vancomycin, which is a last resort antibiotic for some types of antimicrobial resistant infections, are made almost exclusively in China. Additionally, China controls such a large market portion of heparin, a blood thinner used in open-heart surgery, kidney dialysis and blood transfusions that the U.S. government was left with no choice but to continue buying from China even after a contamination scandal in 2007. China is not only the dominant global supplier of pharmaceuticals, but it is also the largest supplier of medical devices in the U.S. These include things like MRI equipment, surgical gowns, and equipment that measures oxygen levels in the blood. Supplies of these essential products have not yet been severely disrupted by the coronavirus, but if China is no longer will or able to supply them to the U.S., thousands of Americans could die. More concerning still are the limited options available to the U.S. and the rest of the globe to make up the shortfall. It could take years to develop the necessary infrastructure to reestablish U.S. manufacturing capacities and obtain Food and Drug Administration licensure to overcome the loss of the Chinese supply. When a disease reaches epidemic levels, the first obligation for leaders in any country is to protect their own people. As this current crisis progresses, there may come a point when political leaders in China will face decisions on whether to prohibit the export of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and other vital medical components in order to treat or protect their own people. While a total loss of active ingredient imports from China might seem far-fetched, we believe the increasing scale of the outbreak moves it closer to the realm of possibility. About six weeks into international recognition of the epidemic in China, there are already shortages of vital personal protective equipment in both China and the U.S. UPS has transported more than 2 million masks and 11,000 gowns to Wuhan to help alleviate the shortage. But what happens when everyone runs out of protective equipment?

Why We Are So Ill-Prepared for a Possible Pandemic Like Coronavirus We were surprised in 2002 when a new coronavirus called SARS emerged from southern China and spread to 17 countries, causing more than 8,000 disease cases and nearly 800 deaths. We were surprised in 2009 when a new H1N1 influenza strain emerged in Mexico and caused worldwide panic. We were surprised in 2014 when Ebola virus broke out in three West African countries, with nearly 30,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths. And here we are now, facing the 2019-nCoV coronavirus outbreak, on the verge of becoming a worldwide pandemic, within China reporting over 20,000 cases and nearly 500 deaths. Three years ago in our book, Deadliest Enemy, a chapter on coronaviruses was entitled, “SARS and MERS: Harbingers of Things to Come.” We take no satisfaction in having been right. But the point is, why are we still surprised each time? The reality is, Mother Nature has the upper hand, and she is using the trappings of modern life – air travel, burgeoning population and low-income country megacities, encroachment on natural habitats, and an interconnected global just-in-time delivery system – to extend her reach. We’ve had fair warning, but as soon as each crisis is over, we just want to forget rather than use our collective experience.

Military preparing quarantine centers for coronavirus patients in US, Pentagon says – Eleven military bases near major airports in the United States are setting up quarantine centers for possible coronavirus patients, the Department of Defense said. The Department of Health and Human Services asked the Pentagon for quarantine space in case beds fill up at other coronavirus centers around the country, according to a DOD statement. The Pentagon already agreed to house up to 1,000 people for quarantine after they returned to the United States from areas with the virus, the Associated Press reports. As of Friday, more than 31,400 people have been infected with the 2019 coronavirus worldwide, with most in mainland China, according to the AP. More than 630 people have died from the virus, almost all in China, the AP reports. “These are tertiary locations, and HHS already has primary and secondary locations identified that are not DOD facilities,” the Pentagon said. Each base will be able to house up to 20 patients along with public health personnel and equipment. The agreement lasts until Feb. 22, the DOD said. “DOD personnel will not be in direct contact with the evacuees and will minimize contact with personnel supporting the evacuees,” the Pentagon said. If anyone tests positive for the virus, public health officials with DHHS will move them to a civilian hospital, according to the statement. The new quarantine centers are:

• JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii (HNL)
• Great Lakes Training Center Navy Base, Illinois (ORD)
• Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base, Texas (DFW)
• March ARB, California (LAX)
• Travis AFB, California (SFO)
• Dobbins ARB, Georgia (ATL)
• Fort Hamilton, New York (JFK)
• Naval Base Kitsap, Washington (SEA)
• Joint Base Anacostia, Washington DC (IAD)
• Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey (EWR)
• Fort Custer Training Center, Michigan (DTW)

The Department of Defense already has quarantine centers at Fort Carson in Colorado, Travis Air Force Base and Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in California, and Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

WHO cautions that transmission of the new coronavirus outside of China could increase – The World Health Organization’s director-general cautioned Saturday that transmission of the new coronavirus outside of China may increase and countries should prepare for that possibility. “It’s slow now, but it may accelerate,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference in Geneva. “So while it’s still slow there is a window of opportunity that we should use to the maximum in order to have a better outcome, and further decrease the progress and stop it.” Tedros’s warning came after health authorities in Singapore announced they haddiagnosed the infection in a man with no travel history to China and no known link to other cases in Singapore. Singaporean authorities suggested – but did not order – that large public events be canceled or deferred. If public events are held, temperature screening of attendees should be conducted and people who are unwell should be turned away, they said.In Germany, health officials announced the 12th case in a cluster of transmission of the new virus – known provisionally as 2019-nCoV – that began when a Chinese woman who works for a German car parts supplier traveled to the company’s head office in Bavaria for meetings. The latest case is the wife of an employee of the company, who himself was confirmed as having the infection last week.

A Stunning 400 Million People Are On Lockdown In China As Guangzhou Joins Quarantine -Guangzhou, the capital of China’s southwestern Guangdong Province and the country’s fifth-largest city with nearly 15 million residents, has just joined the ranks of cities imposing a mandatory lockdown on all citizens, effectively trapping residents inside their homes, with only limited permission to venture into the outside world to buy essential supplies. The decision means 3 provinces, 60 cities, and 400 million people are now facing China’s most-strict level of lockdown as Beijing struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak as the virus has already spread to more than 2 dozen countries. That’s more than 400 million people forcibly locked inside their homes for 638 deaths? Just think about that: If there was ever a reason to believe that Beijing is lying about the numbers (and not just because Tencent accidentally leaked the real data), this is it. 曾錚 Jennifer Zeng@jenniferatntd Breaking: Guangzhou City (population: 14 M) locked down. All residential blocks be isolated from each other. So far around 400 million people locked down in #China to contain #coronavirus.#coronavirusOutbreak Original Chinese official report:http://m.xinhuanet.com/gd/2020-02/07/c_1125542462.htm …

400 Million Locked Down in China To Fight Coronavirus – First the latest update from Beijing: At 04:00 on February 8th, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported that 2656 confirmed cases (2147 cases in Hubei) were newly added, 87 severe cases (52 cases in Hubei) were newly added, and There were 89 deaths (81 in Hubei, 2 in Henan, 1 each in Hebei, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Shandong, Hunan, and Guangxi), and 3,916 suspected new cases (2067 in Hubei). On the same day, 600 new patients were discharged from hospital (324 in Hubei), and 31,124 close contacts were lifted from medical observation. As of 24:00 on February 8, according to reports from 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, there were 33,738 confirmed cases (including 6,188 severe cases), and a total of 2,649 discharged patients were cured (Heilongjiang reduced one) A total of 811 deaths have been reported, 37,198 confirmed cases have been reported (1 in each of Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Henan, and Hainan), and there are currently 28,942 suspected cases. A total of 371,905 close contacts were traced, and 188,183 close contacts were still in medical observation. A total of 53 confirmed cases were reported in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan: 26 in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (1 death), 10 in the Macao Special Administrative Region (1 in cured and discharged), and 17 in Taiwan (1 in cured and discharged).And the charts: The most important news on the weekend was that Guangzhou (13m people) and Chengdu added draconian restrictions to their populaces and Apple assembly partner, Foxconn, was forced to close for another week.It’s become impossible to track how many Chinese are now locked down. Most of the country to one degree or another. Some are reporting 400m. That is plausible. The upside is that the shutdown appears, for now, to have slowed the virus spread in China. That’s great news. If you believe it. The problem is, there are very good reasons to not do so. The epicenter of the outbreak in Hubei is clearly massively worse than is being made out. The number of deaths and other marginal indicators suggests 10x worse, via Bloomie:The new coronavirus may have infected at least 1 in 20 people in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the global outbreak, by the time it peaks in coming weeks, according to scientists modeling its spread.The typically bustling megacity, where the so-called 2010-nCoV virus emerged late last year, has been in lockdown since Jan. 23, restricting the movement of 11 million people. Trends in reported cases in Wuhan so far broadly support the mathematical modeling the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is using to predict the epidemic’s transmission dynamics.That’s half a million people infected… That discrepancy is indicating something else very important for the political response to the virus.

Satellite images show how coronavirus brought Wuhan to a standstill – On January 22, China took the extraordinary step of shutting down all transportation in the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak first began. The measure effectively put 11 million people under quarantine, which is still ongoing as public health officials work to treat individuals who have fallen ill and stop the spread of the virus. As satellite images shared with MIT Technology Review by Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies show, the metropolis has ground to a halt. Bridges and roads are empty. The city’s train stations are deserted. Wuhan’s normally busy airport has completely ceased operations. The effect on air travel has been felt throughout the country – especially for international flights, which have dropped precipitously in the last month. On February 2, for example, the country saw a cancellation of 222 departures (16.7%) and 238 arrivals (18.2%), according to according to the airline tracking service FlightAware. But there has been a burst of activity in Wuhan in at least one aspect: construction. Two new hospitals came together in the city almost overnight to manage and treat sick people (so far there have been more than 28,300 reported cases and 565 deaths, and counting).

Video shows officials in protective suits dragging suspected coronavirus carriers from homes -Video showing a man suspected of having coronavirus desperately sprinting away from officials trying to put him in quarantine has emerged, as the communist regime starts rounding up suffers in Wuhan and taking them to camps. The clip, believed to be taken in Changqing Garden, Wuhan, shows a group of officials approaching the man who who is backed up against a wall. The man then runs away as officials chase after him. Officials run after him along nearly-deserted streets in Changqing Garden, Wuhan +42 The clip, shared to Twitter on Thursday, comes after China ‘s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan called on a ‘people’s war’ against the fast-spreading epidemic Officials run after him along nearly-deserted streets in Changqing Garden, Wuhan. The clip, shared to Twitter on Thursday, comes after China ‘s Vice Premier Sun Chunlan called on a ‘people’s war’ against the fast-spreading epidemic A group of around 10 officials pursue him. The clip then cuts to show the chase from a different angle, showing the nearly-deserted streets of Wuhan.As of Saturday more than 700 people have been killed by the virus, with 86 people dying on Friday alone. More than 34,500 globally have been infected. Another video, said to be taken in Suzhou near Shanghai, shows suspected coronavirus sufferers being forcefully dragged from their homes by officials in hazmat suits. Officials in protective suits are seen holding onto two people by their arms before a third more resistant man is picked up from the floor and carried away in one shocking clip shared online. In the video one person wearing a face mask is seen being quickly pulled along by officials and is soon followed by a woman in a winter jacket who is held underneath the arms by someone in a protective suit. However the officials have more trouble in removing a third person who is laying in a doorway and refusing to be picked up. Two people try to lift him, but after having no luck are they are joined by a man in a blue apron and then two other officials. Despite the manpower, the group still struggle to lift the man who kicks out at them and struggles from the floor. Eventually three of the men manage to pick him up and carry the suspected patient down the stairs.

Where did they go? Millions left city before quarantine (AP) – For weeks after the first reports of a mysterious new virus in Wuhan, millions of people poured out of the central Chinese city, cramming onto buses, trains and planes as the first wave of China’s great Lunar New Year migration broke across the nation. Some carried with them the new virus that has since claimed over 800 lives and sickened more than 37,000 people. Officials finally began to seal the borders on Jan. 23. But it was too late. Speaking to reporters a few days after the city was put under quarantine, the mayor estimated that 5 million people had already left. Where did they go? An Associated Press analysis of domestic travel patterns using map location data from Chinese tech giant Baidu shows that in the two weeks before Wuhan’s lockdown, nearly 70% of trips out of the central Chinese city were within Hubei province. Baidu has a map app that is similar to Google Maps, which is blocked in China. Another 14% of the trips went to the neighboring provinces of Henan, Hunan, Anhui and Jiangxi. Nearly 2% slipped down to Guangdong province, the coastal manufacturing powerhouse across from Hong Kong, and the rest fanned out across China. The cities outside Hubei province that were top destinations for trips from Wuhan between Jan. 10 and Jan. 24 were Chongqing, a municipality next to Hubei province, Beijing and Shanghai. The travel patterns broadly track with the early spread of the virus. The majority of confirmed cases and deaths have occurred in China, within Hubei province, followed by high numbers of cases in central China, with pockets of infections in Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing as well. “It’s definitely too late,” said Jin Dong-Yan, a molecular virologist at Hong Kong University’s School of Biomedical Sciences. “Five million out. That’s a big challenge. Many of them may not come back to Wuhan but hang around somewhere else. To control this outbreak, we have to deal with this. On one hand, we need to identify them. On the other hand, we need to address the issue of stigma and discrimination.” He added that the initial spread of travelers to provinces in central China with large pools of migrant workers and relatively weaker health care systems “puts a big burden on the hospitals … of these resource-limited provinces.”

Coronavirus prompts Beijing residential lockdown as millions return to work — China’s capital Beijing has escalated measures to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus by ordering residential communities and villages to limit access for outsiders, as millions of workers return to the megacity after prolonged holidays. In a 10-point circular published on Sunday, Beijing’s municipal authority ordered that check points be established to examine body temperatures and only residents’ vehicles be allowed into each community. A complete lockdown could be imposed on the area if a confirmed coronavirus case was discovered. “As our city is facing the peak period of returning population, epidemic prevention is now at a critical stage,” the circular said. Beijing is one of China’s most at-risk cities from the coronavirus outbreak as millions are pouring in from extended Lunar New Year holidays. On Monday alone, some 600,000 were expected to arrive in the city by train and another 140,000 by air, according to government estimates, posing a serious challenge to authorities. The capital, which is home to more than 20 million people, had reported at least 337 confirmed novel coronavirus cases and 207 suspected cases as of Monday afternoon. The virus, which has been declared a global health emergency, has infected more than 40,000 people and killed more than 900, the overwhelming majority in mainland China. At the same time it is stepping up its defence against the outbreak, Beijing is also trying to resume normal economic activity. Cai Qi, the Communist Party secretary of Beijing, said the cityt must resume production in an “orderly and safe” fashion. Construction work on a theatre, a library and a museum in Tongzhou, the new location of the Beijing municipal government, started again on Sunday, according to the Beijing government. The latest notice endorsed a “no outsider” policy that has already been widely adopted by many residential compounds and villages in Beijing, which is expected to host the country’s biggest annual political gathering in three weeks. . Beijing’s latest directive has required all those returning to Beijing to report to the local community officials on the day of arrival. Residents who had travelled to Hubei and other hard-hit areas, or who had close contact with people from there, within 14 days of arriving in Beijing would be put under home quarantine. Anyone deemed potentially infected by medical professionals would be put into centralised quarantine, according to the notice. Criminal charges could be made against people who refused to cooperate.

Coronavirus: 40,000 cases may be ‘tip of the iceberg – ‘The death toll from the new virus sweeping across China and surging around the globe closed in on 1,000 Monday amid warnings that the 40,000 known cases may be “the tip of the iceberg.” Chinese health officials said 97 more deaths were reported Sunday, a spike after days of decline that put the global toll at 910. All but two of the deaths have occurred on the Chinese mainland, most in and around the city of Wuhan. Total reported cases rose to 40,573, more than 40,000 of them in China. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned that the numbers may not tell the entire story. “There’ve been some concerning instances of … spread from people with no travel history to China,” Tedros said. “The detection of a small number of cases may indicate more widespread transmission in other countries. In short, we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg.” Containment remains the objective, but but all nations must prepare for an outbreak, he said.A WHO advance team led by Bruce Aylward, a Canadian epidemiologist and emergencies expert, was scheduled to arrive in China on Monday to review that nation’s efforts to curb the outbreak. WHO declared a global emergency almost two weeks ago.WHO also has organized a two-day global forum beginning Tuesday bringing together 400 of the world’s leading experts to prioritize work on rapid diagnostics, a vaccine and effective treatments. The number of infections in the U.S. remained at 12 on Monday. No deaths have been reported, although one American died in Wuhan last week.

Coronavirus death toll passes 900 as more Americans diagnosed on quarantined cruise ship – China confirmed a rise in the number of new coronavirus cases on Monday, quashing hopes after several days of declining infection rates that strict control measures could be paying off. The death toll from the new virus had jumped to 908 by Monday morning, more than were killed during the SARS virus outbreak in 2003. The number of confirmed infections in mainland China rose 15% Sunday to at least 40,171. More than 300 cases have been confirmed outside China, including 12 in the U.S., and global health officials have warned that could be just “the tip of the iceberg” as they learn more about how easily the disease spreads. Dozens of new cases were confirmed Monday on a quarantined cruise ship in Yokohama, Japan, meanwhile, including more Americans. The number of passengers already removed or soon to be removed from the Diamond Princess for treatment in Japanese hospitals stood at 136 Monday. That includes at least 23 American passengers, 11 of whom were among the 66 new cases confirmed Monday. Most of the 3,711 passengers and crew remained under isolation orders on the ship. The Chinese government’s efforts to silence people who tried to raise the alarm about the outbreak early on – and allegedly ongoing efforts to stop people reporting on it – have created a mounting backlash on the country’s heavily-censored social media. There were scattered signs of normality returning in China on Monday. With the extended New Year holiday officially over, roads in Beijing and Shanghai had significantly more traffic and the southern city of Guangzhou said it would start to resume normal public transport. “Of course we’re worried,” said a 25-year-old man surnamed Li in a Beijing beauty salon that reopened Monday. “When customers come in, we first take their temperature, then use disinfectant and ask them to wash their hands.” The Shanghai government suggested staggered work schedules, avoiding group meals and keeping at least one meter away from colleagues. Many were encouraged to work from home and some employers simply delayed opening for another week.

Deaths Top 1,000; U.S. Reports 13th Confirmed Case: Virus Update – The death toll from the coronavirus climbed above 1,000, as the Chinese province at the epicenter of the outbreak reported its highest number of fatalities yet. The U.S. said a 13th confirmed case emerged in the U.S. China’s Hubei province, which added 103 more deaths, has removed two health officials from their posts, according to state television. The move comes as criticism mounts over China’s transparency and speed in handling the epidemic. President Xi Jinping made his first public appearance after the death of a doctor who became a hero for speaking out about the deadly coronavirus sparked public anger. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed another case of coronavirus in California, bringing the number in the U.S. to 13. Trump Sees Warm Weather Curbing Outbreak (11:31 a.m. HK) The U.S. has about a dozen people suffering from the coronavirus but all are expected to recover, U.S. President Donald Trump said. Trump, speaking to Fox Business Network on Monday, said he believes warm weather will curb the spread of the disease beginning in April, and that Chinese authorities have the outbreak under control. “I really believe that they’re going to have it under control fairly soon,” he said. Hong Kong Won’t Enact Mask Laws (11:12 a.m. HK) Hong Kong authorities have no plans to enact laws regulating the city’s supply of surgical masks, Chief Executive Carrie Lam told reporters at a weekly briefing. Lam has faced criticism from the public in recent days as a mask shortage sent people scrambling to form long lines at pharmacies, while residents distrustful of her administration after months of pro-democracy protests staged a run on toilet paper. She urged Hong Kongers to reduce their number of social interactions as the city works to ward off a wider outbreak.

Coronavirus May Infect Up to 500,000 in Wuhan Before It Peaks – The new coronavirus might have infected at least 500,000 people in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the epicenter of the global outbreak, by the time it peaks in coming weeks. But most of those people won’t know it. The typically bustling megacity, where the so-called 2019-nCoV virus emerged late last year, has been in effective lockdown since Jan. 23, restricting the movement of 11 million people. Recent trends in reported cases in Wuhan broadly support the preliminary mathematical modeling the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is using to predict the epidemic’s transmission dynamics. “Assuming current trends continue, we’re still projecting a mid-to-late-February peak” of virus cases in Wuhan, Adam Kucharski, an associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology, said by email Sunday. “There’s a lot of uncertainty, so I’m cautious about picking out a single value for the peak, but it’s possible based on current data we might see a peak prevalence over 5%.” That would potentially mean at least 1 in 20 people would have been infected in the city by the time the epidemic peaks, Kucharski said, adding that this may change if transmission patterns slow in coming days. The prediction doesn’t indicate a coming surge in cases in Wuhan, but that the current cumulative total doesn’t reflect all infections, especially mild ones, that have occurred. Health authorities in China and around the world are anxiously waiting to know whether the world’s largest known quarantine effort has been effective in slowing the spread of the pneumonia-causing virus in Wuhan and across other cities in Hubei province, a landlocked region of 60 million people. Kucharski, whose research focuses on the dynamics of infectious diseases, and colleagues have based their modeling on a range of assumptions about the 2019-nCoV virus. These include an incubation period of 5.2 days, a delay from the onset of symptoms to confirmation of infection of 6.1 days, and about 10 million people being at risk of infection in Wuhan. Based on that, a prevalence of 5% equates to about 500,000 cumulative infections. That’s many times more than the 16,902 cases provincial health authorities had counted in Wuhan as of midnight Sunday. Researchers will gauge the proportion of people in the population who have been infected with 2019-nCoV after a test becomes available that enables them to conduct a so-called serosurvey to identify those whose blood contains antibodies produced in response to exposure to the virus. There’s to be variation in the estimates, reasonably enough; compare this and this.

Researchers say the coronavirus may be more contagious than current data shows – Infectious disease specialists and scientists say the new coronavirus that’s shuttering companies across mainland China may be more contagious than current data shows. Emerging in Wuhan, China, about a month ago, the virus has spread from about 300 people as of Jan. 21 to close to 21,000 and killed more than 420 – with the number of new cases growing by the thousands every day. “The rapid acceleration of cases is of concern,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s emergencies program, said at a news conference last week before the agency declared a global health emergency. Chinese scientists worry the respiratory illness, which world health officials say likely came from a fish market, has mutated to adapt to its new human hosts far more quickly than SARS. Data on the virus is changing by the day, and some infectious disease specialists say it will take weeks before they can see just how contagious it is. What they’re seeing so far is concerning and leading U.S. and international scientists to believe the virus is more contagious than the current data shows, according to interviews with epidemiologists, scientists and infectious disease specialists. The disease is spreading quickly. China’s health minister, Ma Xiaowei, told reporters last month that there is evidence it’s already mutated into a stronger variation that is able to spread more easily among humans. World health officials know the respiratory disease is capable of spreading through human-to-human contact, droplets carried through sneezing and coughing, and germs left on inanimate objects. The illness is cable of spreading before symptoms show, and about 20% of patients become severely ill, leading to pneumonia and respiratory failure, health officials say. ″[The] continued increase in cases and the evidence of human-to-human transmission outside of China are, of course, most deeply disturbing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news conference at the organization’s Geneva headquarters last week. “Although the numbers outside China are still relatively small, they hold the potential for a much larger outbreak.” The ‘R naught’ The so-called R naught of the disease, a mathematical equation that shows how many people will get sick from each infected person, is around 2.2, according to a report last week from the New England Journal of Medicine. That means two or more people will catch the virus from a person who already has it, making it more infectious than the seasonal flu and the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which had an R naught of about 1.8 and killed at least 50 million people across the world. The current R naught of the new virus is lower than the 2003 SARS outbreak, which had an R naught of between 2 and 5. World health officials caution that it may take months before the true R naught is known as more coronavirus cases come to light.

Scientists worry coronavirus could evolve into something worse than flu, says quarantined expert – The seasonal flu has killed more people than the coronavirus, but that is not why the outbreak is so concerning, infectious disease expert Ian Lipkin told CNBC on Monday. “It’s a new virus. We don’t know much about it, and therefore we’re all concerned to make certain it doesn’t evolve into something even worse,” said Lipkin, speaking from his New York home on a 14-day self-quarantine after traveling to China to work on the outbreak. Lipkin, the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, was in Guangzhou and Beijing, where he advised local health officials. He said he did not travel to the city where the coronavirus emerged, Wuhan in central China, because it would have been more difficult to return to the U.S. Lipkin, who worked on the 2003 SARS outbreak, said it is true that seasonal flu presents its own kind of problem, noting that globally up to 650,000 people die from it each year. So far, more than 900 people who had the coronavirus have died. The coronavirus is “not nearly as challenging for us as influenza” when seen strictly by the number of deaths, Lipkin said. But that is not the only lens through which the outbreak should be viewed, he cautioned. “We don’t know much about its transmissibility. We don’t necessarily have accurate diagnostic tests. And we don’t really know where the outbreak is going to go,” Lipkin said on CNBC’s “The Exchange.” “The only thing we have at present, absent vaccines or drugs, is containment,” he added. The coronavirus emerged in Wuhan about a month ago and has since spread from about 300 people as of Jan. 21 to more than 40,000. New cases grow by the thousands each day, the vast majority of which are in China. Coronaviruses typically infect animals, but strains can sometimes evolve and spread to humans. Symptoms in humans can include fever, sore throat and shortness of breath. The respiratory disease is capable of spreading through human-to-human contact, world health officials say. The illness also is able to spread before symptoms materialize. Health officials estimate about 20% of patients become severely sick, leading to pneumonia and respiratory failure. Lipkin said he estimates the mortality rate of the coronavirus will ultimately be less than 1%. But the figure is “speculative” because more antibody tests need to be conducted “so we can figure out who might have been infected but not manifested signs of disease,” he said.

Chinatown Restaurant And Tourism Sales Plunge Over Coronavirus Fears – Despite the fact that there have been no confirmed cases of coronavirus in NYC, sales at Chinatown restaurants have plunged amidst the outbreak, which is looking more like a potential global threat with each passing day. Now Wah Tea Parlor’s owner, Wilson Tang, said that on February 3, his restaurant saw an unprecedented 40% drop in business, according to Eater New York. It was a similar story out of critically acclaimed Sichuan restaurant Hwa Yuan, which also saw a steep plunge in sales this week. Tang said: “It sucks. The past couple days suck. We’ve been letting people go early, just to let them take some extra time off. It’s slow in general.” Other restaurants in China told the New York Times that sales have fallen by as much as 70% over the last 10 days. The city is also “suffering” from a decline in Chinese tourists, who make up the second largest group of international travelers to the city. In turn, the businesses that make a living off of these tourists, like restaurants, are seeing a loss of revenue attributable to tourism. Elizabeth Chin, a travel agent in Fort Lee, N.J. told the NY Times: “It’s going to be a serious financial burden. The flights are canceled. The tour operators have canceled.” Bruce Zhu, the manager of China Tour Travel Services in Flushing, Queens said: “It’s a big problem. We have to cancel the bookings, cancel the hotels. We lose a lot of money on the bookings.” “It’s all stopped – zero,” another travel agent in Flushing lamented. Sean F. Hennessey, an assistant professor at New York University who follows the travel industry, said the economic impact is going to be worse than SARS. “New York will feel it, because not only have Chinese travelers become an increasingly large portion of the visitor base, but they are one of the most profitable portions of the visitor base, not just for hotels but for the city as a whole. They stay longer and they tend to spend more money,” he said. And the aftershocks aren’t just being felt in Chinatown in New York. For example, Martin Ma, the general manager of Jinli in London, said he is seeing a similar impact: “Compared to the last few months, we lost around 50 percent of our customers. The reason is the virus.”

Cruise ship refused entry by fifth port due to coronavirus fears – A Holland America Line cruise ship on Tuesday was refused entry to Thailand over fears of coronavirus. This is the fifth port to deny the ship to dock despite no cases of the virus having been confirmed on board the ship. Holland America Line tweeted Monday that its MS Amsterdam ship would be disembarking in Bangkok for travelers to head home, but on Tuesday the Thai health minister refused the ship’s entry. “I have issued orders. Permission to dock refused,” Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul reportedly said in a Facebook post. “We are aware of the reports regarding the status of Westerdam’s call to Laem Chabang (Bangkok), Thailand,” Holland America Line tweeted Tuesday. “We are actively working this matter & will provide an update when able. We know this is confusing for our guests and their families & we greatly appreciate their patience.” Four other countries or territories have denied entry to the ship, including ports in Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and Guam, Bloomberg News reports, citing the World Health Organization. Thai Deputy Transport Minister Atirat Ratanasate said in a Facebook post the country would “gladly help providing fuel, medicine and food,” although the ship is not allowed to dock in the country’s port, Reuters reports. A separate cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, is quarantined in Japan and has a total of 130 confirmed cases on board as of Monday.

Coronavirus – The African Connection – Like every issue of consequence, in our Age of Incomprehension, opinion about the truth concerning the Corona virus outbreak is divided. Either China is taking all prudent steps, the virus, while transmissible, has a low mortality rate and the West, with its travel bans, is over-reacting in a vaguely racist manner, or China has the virus far from contained, we don’t know just how transmissible it is nor its mortality rate because the figures from China can’t be trusted and therefore travel bans are a wise precaution. If travel bans to and from the infected parts of China turn out to have been justified then one country in particular may be worth watching, Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s Bole International airport is the main African gateway to and from China. On average 1500 passengers per day arrive from China every day. Ethiopia scans them all for symptoms which essentially means taking their temperature. Many of those passengers then fly on to other parts of Africa where Chinese companies are doing business. These are 2018 figures courtesy of Brookings. The three main areas of Chinese business in Africa are transport, which generally means building airports and railways; energy which means building power stations; and grids and metals which means mines.One of the airports the Chinese funded and built is Bole International Airport in Ethiopia.The flights from China arriving at Bole International come from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hong Kong. Just yesterday the Chinese government added China’s 5th largest city Guangzhou to its list of locked down quarantined cities. Which strikes me as news. For Guangzhou to have been quarantined means it must already have a large number of cases. Guangzhou is not near to Wuhan, the source of the Corona virus outbreak. It is near to Hong Kong. It is linked to both by high speed rail and internal air travel. Guangzhou airport is in fact the third busiest in China and the 13th busiest in the world handling over 65 million passengers per year. So… the spread of the Corona virus in Guangzhou has got so serious that the Chinese government has quarantined it. Yet till now flights from there to Ethiopia were running. Of course I have no idea how many passengers were actually on those flights nor where they might have originated from. But the rail and air links from Wuhan and other cities to Guangzhou and the fact that Guangzhou is therefore the hub to which any workers going to Africa would have passed through, does raise a few questions. Remember, 1500 per day on average (meaning in ‘normal times’ which these are not) through Bole international from China alone.

Canadian Scientist At Center Of Chinese Bio-Espionage Probe Found Dead In Africa? — As GreatGameIndia.com detailed earlier, in a very strange turn of events, renowned scientist Frank Plummer who received Saudi SARS Coronavirus sample and was working on Coronavirus (HIV) vaccine in the Winnipeg based Canadian lab from where the virus was smuggled by Chinese Biowarfare agents and weaponized as revealed in GreatGameIndia investigation, has died in mysterious conditions. Frank Plummer was the key to the Chinese Biological Espionage case at Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory.

• Breaking: India launch investigation against China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology
• Exclusive: Coronavirus Bioweapon – How Chinese agents stole Coronavirus from Canada and weaponized it
• Exclusive Interview: Bioweapons Expert Dr. Francis Boyle on the Origins of Coronavirus (transcript)
• Must read piece published worldwide: Coronavirus – China’s Secret Plan to Weaponize Viruses
• Update: Chinese Biowarfare agents at Harvard University caught smuggling deadly viruses

According to CBC, Plummer, 67, was in Kenya, where he was a keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the University of Nairobi’s collaborative centre for research and training in HIV/AIDS/STIs. Dr. Larry Gelmon, who helped set up that meeting, said Plummer collapsed and was taken to hospital in Nairobi, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. What is not mentioned in the CBC report however is that Plummer worked in the same National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, Canada from where Chinese Biowarfare agent Xiangguo Qiu and her colleagues smuggled SARS Coronavirus to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology where it is believed to have been weaponized and leaked. Infact, as GreatGameIndia reported in our exclusive report on Coronavirus Bioweapon, as Scientific Director Frank Plummer was the one who acquired the SARS Coronavirus sample of the Saudi patient at the NML Winnipeg Lab from Ron Fouchier, a leading virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center (EMC) in Rotterdam, the Netherlands who was sent the virus by Egyptian virologist Dr. Ali Mohamed Zaki who isolated and identified a previously unknown type of Coronavirus from the Saudi patient’s lungs. Fouchier sequenced the virus from a sample sent by Zaki using a broad-spectrum “pan-coronavirus” real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method to test for distinguishing features of a number of known coronaviruses known to infect humans. This Coronavirus sample arrived at Canada’s NML Winnipeg facility on May 4, 2013 from the Dutch lab received by Frank Plummer. The Canadian lab grew up stocks of the virus and used it to assess diagnostic tests being used in Canada. Winnipeg scientists worked to see which animal species can be infected with the new virus.

Coronavirus death toll passes 1,100 as China reports more than 90 new deaths – The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak topped 1,100 on Tuesday, after officials in the outbreak’s epicenter reported more than 90 new deaths in the past 24 hours. The announcement came as top scientists gathered in Geneva to try and answer questions about the new disease, with the head of the World Health Organization issuing a plea for global unity against “a common enemy that does not respect borders or ideologies.” In the U.S., a federal quarantine ended Tuesday for nearly 200 Americans who have been at a Southern California military base for the past two weeks, health officials announced. The group of 195 people was evacuated from the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China on a U.S.-chartered flight in January, and no one in the group was found to have the virus, Dr. Cameron Kaiser, the public health officer for Riverside County, told reporters. Authorities said there were 45,118 confirmed cases of the disease in China alone, with 395 more in 24 different countries. That includes a new case confirmed Monday in San Diego, the 13th person diagnosed in the U.S. Like most cases, that patient was recently in the Chinese city of Wuhan. All but one of the fatalities from the virus have been in mainland China. “With 99% of cases in China, this remains very much an emergency for that country, but one that holds a very grave threat for the rest of the world,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, warned Tuesday, urging health officials and governments to “use the window of opportunity that we have now.” The WHO has grown increasingly concerned about the virus being transmitted from people with no recent history of travel to China to others in their home countries. Tedros said Monday that this “community spread,” which has been seen now in the U.K. and Spain, at least, could be the “spark” that lights a bigger fire. A Chinese worker wears a protective suit and mask as she scans groceries for a customer at a supermarket on February 11, 2020, in Beijing, China.

Reporter’s Notebook: Life and death in a Wuhan coronavirus ICU – In the coronavirus epidemic, doctors on the front lines take on the greatest risk and best understand the situation. Dr Peng Zhiyong, director of acute medicine at the Wuhan University South Central Hospital, is one of those doctors.In an interview on Tuesday with Caixin, Dr Peng described his personal experiences in first encountering the disease in early January and quickly grasping its virulent potential and the need for stringent quarantine measures.As the contagion spread and flooded his ICU, the doctor observed that three weeks seemed to determine the difference between life and death. Patients with stronger immune systems would start to recover in a couple of weeks, but in the second week, some cases would take a turn for the worse.In the third week, keeping some of these acute patients alive might require extraordinary intervention. For this group, the death rate seems to be 4 per cent to 5 per cent, Dr Peng said. After working his 12-hour daytime shifts, the doctor spends his evenings researching the disease and has summarised his observations in a thesis.The doctors and nurses at his hospital are overwhelmed with patients. Once they don protective hazmat suits, they go without food, drink and bathroom breaks for their entire shifts. That’s because there aren’t enough of the suits for a mid-shift change, he said.Over the past month on the front lines of the coronavirus battle, Dr Peng has been brought to tears many times when forced to turn away patients for lack of staffing and beds. He said what really got to him, though, was the death of an acutely ill pregnant woman when treatment stopped for lack of money – the day before the government decided to pick up the costs of all coronavirus treatments.Here’s our interview with the ICU doctor:

China Ousts Officials as New Cases Soar by 15,000: Virus Update Two top Chinese officials at the center of the coronavirus outbreak were ousted, while new cases jumped by 15,000 as Hubei province revised its method for counting infections.The Communist Party secretaries for Hubei and the city of Wuhan were removed in the biggest political fallout so far from the epidemic. Fatalities in Hubei climbed by 242, with total deaths in China rising to 1,367. The number of infections in Hubei jumped by 14,840, sending the total number of cases in China toward 60,000. Japan confirmed 44 more cases on a quarantined cruise ship. Hong Kong extended the closure of schools until at least March 16, while the wireless industry scrapped its biggest annual showcase. China reported 15,152 additional coronavirus cases as of Feb. 12, with Hubei’s new method for counting infections accounting for the bulk of the additions.The Road to a Coronavirus Vaccine Runs Through Oslo The death toll rose by 254, the National Health Commission said at briefing. That brings the total fatality rate in mainland China to 1,367.The NHC said there are 8,030 severe cases, while 5,911 have recovered or been discharged.Outside of mainland China, two deaths have been reported, one in Hong Kong and the other in the Philippines.Australia will extend its ban on people entering the country from mainland China due to the coronavirus for an extra week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. The original 14-day ban was due to expire on Saturday. Australia’s National Security Committee will review the need for the ban on a week-by-week basis, Morrison told reporters in Canberra. China’s Hubei province, at the center of the coronavirus outbreak, is requiring that enterprises not resume work before Feb. 20, according to the local government.

Basic Coronavirus Facts in Wuhan Outbreak Still Aren’t Clear -Questions about the coronavirus are coming thick and fast – but not answers. Today China reported a startling leap in cases, adding over 14,000 – a third of the existing number – to the total in Hubei, the central Chinese province where the virus started. This seems to be in part the result of a broader methodology that has moved many cases from the suspected column into being clearly counted as confirmed – but much remains uncertain. As the death toll reaches over 1,300, the virus remains wrapped in a cloud of doubt. As would happen anywhere, the situation on the ground is chaotic, and much goes unreported or exaggerated. But there are also specific problems here. The Chinese Communist Party has a record of covering up or underreporting the toll of natural disasters from floods toearthquakes. Information is routinely concealed by officials from the public and their superiors for personal reasons. All this leads to an awful lot we don’t know. We don’t know how many coronavirus cases there are. The Chinese authorities are producing daily figures of confirmed and suspected numbers – but there are clearly many more out there. Just how many is a big question. Neil Ferguson, a prominent epidemiologist, estimated last week that as few as 10 percent of cases could be being detected. Other early modeling also showed the possibility of startling underestimates; one study suggested the number of cases in Wuhan alone had reached 75,000 by Jan. 25.Many factors could be causing cases to be missed. Some victims appear to have relatively mild symptoms, especially children. The sudden rise in cases today appears to have been a result of shifting – in Hubei but not elsewhere – patients clinically diagnosed by doctors but that had not been able to be fully tested into the ‘confirmed’ group. Because of fears of being isolated or stigmatized, some people showing symptoms may be avoiding the medical system, which is why the authorities have now restricted the sale of medication. In a country where out-of-pocket payments are the norm, people may be avoiding hospitals due to lack of money: Despite the government’s promise to cover costs, no clear mechanism is in place to compensate them, and some patients are paying many times their monthly income. We don’t know exactly how deadly the virus is.We don’t know exactly howdeadly the virus is. While the percentage of deaths among all known cases has remained steady in the official number at around 2.1 to 2.2 percent, there are several problems with that. Most of those diagnosed started experiencing symptoms only in the last week, and the disease hasn’t yet run its course. The number of deaths appears to be severely understated, with many reports of victims dying at home and being cremated before being counted in the official total. (Cremation is a contentious issue in China and not just during epidemics.)Deaths are also, so far, overwhelmingly concentrated in Wuhan itself, with the rate there nearing 5 percent.

China reports more than 15,000 new coronavirus cases overnight – – Political officials were fired and infection cases skyrocketed in China on Thursday, reminding a nation stuck at home and scientists watching worldwide just how little is known about the coronavirus outbreak that has infected at least 60,000 and killed more than 1,300 people.Previous numbers had been reassuring, with daily confirmations of new infections dropping from several thousand to around 1,000. Officials in Beijing, increasingly worried about the economic toll of the outbreak, urged people to go back to work. State media ran editorials about resuming international flights to China.But on Thursday the case numbers shot up. Chinese health authorities reported 15,152 new cases of COVID-19 – the World Health Organization’s new name for the viral disease – overnight. Hubei province, the epidemic’s epicenter, accounted for most of the increase: The number of infections went up by 14,840, more than nine times the 1,638 new cases reported there a day earlier.Then came the purge. Beijing announced that both the Communist Party chiefs of Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province were fired and replaced with officials known for “stability maintenance” and closely allied with party chairman and President Xi Jinping. The sackings followed earlier dismissals including the Hubei health commission’s party chief and its director. The new figures don’t indicate a rapid overnight spread of the virus in Hubei, but rather a change in the way patients are counted there, which may provide better access to treatment on the front lines. New cases of COVID-19 are being confirmed based on symptoms and a CT scan of the patient’s lungs. Previously, confirmations were based on time-consuming lab tests, which created huge backlogs. Many critically sick patients with symptoms but no confirmation of infection had complained of being turned away from hospitals. An unknown number have died without being diagnosed as having the virus. Nearly 90% of the new cases reported in Hubei on Thursday were “clinically diagnosed” under the new rules.The change reveals China had been undercounting its COVID-19 cases. It is also a troubling reminder that there is no clarity yet on the extent or severity of the outbreak.“The picture is evolving day by day … it is a constantly moving target,” said John Nicholls, a pathologist at the University of Hong Kong who worked on the SARS outbreak in 2003. “We really have got no idea about the true number of cases.”Both Chinese and foreign epidemiologists believe that a large number of mild COVID-19 cases have still not been counted. The reasons abound: a shortage of tests, overwhelmed caregivers, and many infected patients whose symptoms aren’t severe enough to qualify for tests, which are not always reliable.

China accused of cover-up as coronavirus death toll soars – Beijing faced questions yesterday about its alleged efforts to cover up the extent of the coronavirus outbreak after it reported a huge rise in the number of deaths and infections and dismissed two top officials in its worst-hit province. A change in how the authorities count sufferers in the province of Hubei, to include those judged by a doctor to have the illness after a scan as well as those who have clinically tested positive, has increased numbers. The Chinese National Health Commission reported today that 121 people died yesterday and 5,090 new cases were detected. The virus has now claimed 1,380 lives and infected nearly 64,000 people in China. The nationwide tally jumped by 15,152 new cases on Wednesday, with the daily death toll hitting 254, the most so far. On Tuesday China reported 1,638 new cases and 108 deaths, raising hopes, now dashed, that the worst had passed. “Based on the current trend in confirmed cases, this appears to be a clear indication that while the Chinese authorities are doing their best to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the fairly drastic measures they have implemented to date would appear to have been too little too late,” Adam Kamradt-Scott, an expert in infectious diseases from the University of Sydney, said. Japan recorded its first death from the virus yesterday, an 80-year-old woman in Kanagawa prefecture, near Tokyo. The Japanese authorities pledged to step up testing and containment efforts. President Xi demanded that all patients in Hubei be taken in for treatment after many complained that they had been denied access to medical services, which have been overwhelmed by the growing numbers. However, his edict appears to raise the prospect of suspected sufferers being taken involuntarily from their homes. Videos posted on social media in recent days have purported to show people being dragged from their apartments by teams dressed in hazmat suits or being chased through streets and hauled away. Tarik Jasarevic, a World Health Organisation spokesman, said that the agency was seeking more clarity from China on the updates to its case definition and reporting protocol. Ying Yong, 62, who was mayor of Shanghai and considered close to Mr Xi, has replaced Jiang Chaoliang, 62, as provincial party chief. Wang Zhonglin, 57, has replaced Ma Guoqiang, 56, as party chief for the city of Wuhan. Suisheng Zhao, a political scientist at the University of Denver, said that there was widespread criticism of the Chinese government’s response. It has quarantined about 60 million people. The government has already faced accusations that it tried to suppress warnings of the emerging virus by doctors in Wuhan. One of those doctors, Li Wenliang, died from the virus last Friday.

Sudden Militarization Of Wuhan’s P4 Lab Raises New Questions About The Origin Of The Deadly Covid-19 Virus – The reported militarization of Wuhan’s P4 Lab has raised new questions about the origin of the Covid-19 virus and the apparent cover-up that has occurred since it was first made public. Following the removal of the most senior health officials in Wuhan yesterday, Chinese State Media has just reported that Chen Wei, China’s chief biochemical weapon defense expert, is now to be stationed in Wuhan to lead the efforts to overcome the deadly, pneumonia-like pathogen. According to the PLA Daily report, Chen Wei holds the rank of major general, and along with reports that Chinese troops have started to “assist”, it strongly suggests that the PLA has taken control of the situation. As Epoch Times reports, before this latest report, Chen’s military rank and specialization was not widely known. She was first interviewed on Jan. 30 by the state-run China Science Daily. In a second interview the next day, she predicted that the outbreak in Wuhan would let up over the next few days, but could worsen again soon… “We need to prepare for the worst-case scenario, find the best solutions, and be ready to fight the longest battle,” she said. Amid constant propaganda from CCP officials, and widespread censorship, many – including US Senator Tom Cotton – have wondered if the virus was bio-engineered, and was ‘leaked’ from the lab (which just happens to be located at the epicenter of the virus). The militarization, and bringing in of China’s foremost bio-weapons expert raises the question once again of whether the Wuhan Strain of coronavirus (Covid-19) is the result of naturally emergent mutations against the possibility that it may be a bio-engineered strain meant for defensive immunotherapy protocols that was released into the public, most likely by accident. A new report – a product of a collaboration between a retired professional scientist with 30 years of experience in genomic sequencing and analysis who helped design several ubiquitous bioinformatic software tools, and a former NSA counterterrorism analyst – suggests that this possible mistake may have been precipitated by the need to quickly finish research that was being rushed for John Hopkin’s Event 201 which was held this past October and meant to gameplan the containment of a global pandemic. Research may also have been hurried due to deadlines before the impending Chinese New Year – the timing of these events point to increased human error, not a globalist conspiracy. Beijing has had four known accidental leaks of the SARS virus in recent years, so there is absolutely no reason to assume that this strain of coronavirus from Wuhan didn’t accidentally leak out as well.

Smoking Gun? Chinese Scientist Finds “Killer Coronavirus Probably Originated From A Laboratory In Wuhan” – One week after the White House asked scientists to finally investigate whether the Covid-19 virus was bio-engineered (i.e., created in a lab), none other than CNBC jumped on the bandwagon and echoing a similar question by Senator Tom Cotton – and of course, Zero Hedge – said “maybe the coronavirus was man made.” All this is taking place as the mainstream media, whose purpose is similar to that of Beijing in minimizing public concerns and panic even if it means fabricating reality, presses on with the popular theory that the virus emerged from the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan (we recently showed why this appears very unlikely) while branding anyone who suggests that the coronavirus might have originated as a bioweapon developed in a secretive Wuhan lab as deranged conspiracy theorist (a propaganda approach first popularized in the 1960s by the CIA to discredit controversial views). Indeed, just today, the FT reported that Trevor Bedford, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, “rubbished stories circulating on social media that Covid-19 was created at Wuhan Institute of Virology or elsewhere in China.” Bedford is of course entitled to his opinion, which was only reinforced by the lack of any dissenting views from the scientific community, especially in “ground zero”, China. That has now changed, however, with what may be a “smoking gun” report, first noted by Harvard to the big house, from a scientist at the prestigious South China University of Technology in Guangzhou China. A pre-print published by Botao Xiao and Lei Xiao, titled “The possible origins of 2019-nCoV coronavirus” whose abstract is the following… The 2019-nCoV has caused an epidemic of 28,060 laboratory-confirmed infections in human including 564 deaths in China by February 6, 2020. Two descriptions of the virus published on Nature this week indicated that the genome sequences from patients were almost identical to the Bat CoV ZC45 coronavirus. It was critical to study where the pathogen came from and how it passed onto human. An article published on The Lancet reported that 27 of 41 infected patients were found to have contact with the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. We noted two laboratories conducting research on bat coronavirus in Wuhan, one of which was only 280 meters from the seafood market. We briefly examined the histories of the laboratories and proposed that the coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory. … and an especially ominous conclusion: In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. Who is Botao and should anyone listen to him? Well, yes: this is what we find about the research group of the Harvard post-doc:

“Maybe This Was Man Made” – CNBC Questions Coronavirus Origins As ZeroHedge Remains Banned On Twitter In keeping with our storied history of presenting readers with plausible theories and allowing them to make their own decisions often times weeks, months or years in advance of the mainstream media figuring them out and/or having the courage to finally touch on them, we’re not surprised to see some of the critical questions we raised about the coronavirus origins weeks ago finally bleed into the mainstream media this morning.The idea of the coronavirus potentially being a man made virus was a question we raised several weeks ago in this post when we asked “Is This The Man Behind the Global Coronavirus Pandemic?”. In that post, we asked questions about Zhou Peng, one of China’s top virology and immunology experts who works at China’s top-rated biohazard lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But the idea of their ever-so-beloved government covering up something from them or not having their best interest in mind was so disturbing the to snowflakes at Twitter, they lashed out by banning Zero Hedge from their platform with little color around why they took such drastic action. Their ban followed a BuzzFeed article claiming we had “doxed” the scientist involved by asking questions and posting the same information listed publicly on his website. The ban was so questionable, it sent shockwaves across the mainstream media, even making it as far as CBS National News, who stated: “The financial website Zero Hedge is now barred from Twitter after publishing an article relaying a conspiracy theory that a Chinese scientist might be to blame for the coronavirus outbreak.”But – as it often happens – the very same question that put us in our own social media “quarantine” simply can’t be ignored. As we have found over the years, if it is an idea worthy of critical examination – or better yet, the truth – it often times can’t be hidden, much to the chagrin of the government and/or beta male social media CEOs. This morning, CNBC’s Eunice Yoon did an interview with Joe Kernen on Squawk Box where she offered an update on-the-ground in China. Among the topics discussed with Kernen was the origins of the virus. Yoon admitted in her discussion with Kernen that there was a “theory” going around China that the virus could be man made. “There are plenty of theories out there because Wuhan does have a P4 lab,” Yoon says. She continues:“There was a biochemical weapons expert who went from the Chinese military who went there – who is there now to look at some of the testing kits. Because she is there – maybe this was man-made and there’s a theory that this could have been part of a bioweapons program. But that’s just a theory.”We must give credit to Yoon, who has been on the ground in China since the beginning of the outbreak and whose reporting has been relatively objective and doesn’t appear (too much) to be pandering to the CCP or the World Health Organization’s token narrative. Yoon also references back to this interview during which she really exposes the reality on the ground in China…

WHO Turns On China, Demands To Know How Nearly 2,000 Doctors Were Infected With COVID-19 – Summary:

• China says 1,716 medical workers have been infected
• WHO demands to know more about sick doctors, insists group of 12 virus experts will reach Beijing over the weekend
• Singapore reports largest daily jump in cases amid increased human-to-human transmission
• Hong Kong reports 3 new cases
• Hubei’s new party boss orders quarantine tightened
• President Xi touts new “biosecurity law”
• Hong Kong Disney land offers space for quarantine
• Chinese company says blood plasma of recovered patients useful in combating the virus
• US mulling new travel restrictions
• Japan reports 4 new cases; one patient recently returned from Hawaii.
• CDC Director: Virus is “Coming” to the US.

The WHO has just wrapped up its now-daily presser for Friday, and it appeared to focus on imminent plans to send a group of a dozen scientists and researchers to Beijing to figure out exactly what the hell is going on. Much fuss has been made over the past week over China’s continued refusals to allow Americans, or any other foreigners, for that matter, to offer assistance with the virus response. It’s almost as if they’re…hiding something… Even after yesterday’s big reveal about the change in their ‘pro forma accounting standards’ to reflect a higher death toll and number of confirmed cases (the jump alarmed global investors and prompted a selloff on equity markets), China still won’t let Americans participate in a WHO-sponsored team of 12 researchers who are traveling to the mainland. It was a big deal earlier this week when Beijing said it would reluctantly accept the team, ending weeks of suspiciously standoffish behavior (though the WHO bigwigs did travel to Beijing for meetings). But as one analyst said earlier on CNBC: ‘We want to see foreign boots on the ground before we simply take the Chinese at their word’.It’s also notable how the WHO, initially a purveyor of what seemed like propaganda hot off the presses in Beijing, seems to have turned completely against its benefactor, now treating it with public suspicion.

First Mass Quarantine Outside Of China: Vietnam Puts Area With 10,000 Residents Under Coronavirus Quarantine For most of the past decade, Vietnam had benefited from China’s r ising standard of living, higher wages, as companies seeking the lowest cost producer quietly but firmly transferred supply chains to originate out of China and into lower-cost locales such as Vietnam, whose devaluing currency (aptly named the dong) only helped boosting exports. Which is why it is painfully ironic that the same nation that indirectly helped Vietnam become a prominent player in global trade, now appears set to cripple Vietnam’s fledgling export powerhouse. The culprit? Covid-19.With China’s economy grinding to a halt as tens of thousands of people are infected and hundreds of millions are under quarantine from the coronavirus pandemic, a new viral hub may be emerging near Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.According to the Bangkok Post, villages in Vietnam with 10,000 people close to the nation’s capital were placed under quarantine on Thursday after six cases of the deadly new coronavirus were discovered there, authorities said.The locking down of the commune of Son Loi, about 40 kilometres from Hanoi, is the first mass quarantine outside of China since the virus emerged from Wuhan. “As of February 13, 2020, we will urgently implement the task of isolation and quarantine of the epidemic area in Son Loi commune,” said a health ministry statement. “The timeline… is for 20 days”.

Coronavirus Has Infected More Than 60,000 Worldwide, New Figures From China Reveal – As the world’s leading health experts wrapped up a two-day forum about the coronavirus at the World Health Organization’s Geneva headquarters Wednesday, new figures out of China over the past 24 hours revealed that the respiratory illness has now infected more than 60,000 people globally.During a Thursday press conference about COVID-19, as the virus is now officially known, Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Program, emphasized that the new figures don’t represent a spike in infections but rather reflect a change in the way China is counting cases.Since Wednesday, China has reported an additional 1,820 laboratory-confirmed cases as well as 13,332 clinically-confirmed cases in the Hubei province, Ryan said. Experts believe the virus outbreak started at a “wet market” in Wuhan, the province’s capital and largest city, late last year.The new additions brought the total number of cases in mainland China to 59,804, with at least 1,367 deaths,according to The Associated Press. There are also 51 cases, with one death, in Hong Kong, and 10 cases in Macao, which are both special administrative regions of China.One public health expert suggested to the AP that China’s new “clinical diagnosis case” classification likely reflects a backlog of samples from patients: He said it wasn’t unprecedented for case definitions to rely on doctors’ diagnoses rather than wait for laboratory confirmation, and that these kinds of changes usually happen when there are simply too many patients to process in a fast-moving outbreak. “I’m not surprised that this has happened given the way the outbreak has been going in China,” Woolhouse said. “You have to be pragmatic and take the concerns of the patient first and treat them as if they already have the disease, even in the absence of lab confirmation.” While the vast majority of infections and deaths have been in China, particularly the Hubei province, relatively small numbers of infections and a few deaths have been documented in over two dozen other countries. Japan has the second-highest number of cases due to a quarantined cruise ship docked in Yokohama.Reuters reported Thursday that “elderly passengers on the Diamond Princess who have pre-existing conditions or are in windowless rooms would be allowed to leave starting from Friday, rather than the originally targeted date of Feb. 19. They will complete their quarantine onshore.”That announcement came from Japanese Health Minister Katsunobu Kato, who confirmed later in the day that a woman in her 80s from the Kanagawa prefecture had died after contracting the virus, marking the country’s first death related to the COVID-19 outbreak.

China’s Coronavirus Death Toll Rises Above 1,500 – An elderly Chinese tourist has died in France from the new coronavirus. The 80-year-old man, who died in Paris, is the first person in Europe to die due to complications from the virus that originated in China. In addition, the first African coronavirus infection has been reported, in Egypt. Officials in China’s capital say all people returning to Beijing must self-quarantine themselves for 14 days. As China looks to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, the state-run Beijing Daily newspaper reports that those who refuse to seclude themselves or violate other containment rules “will be held accountable under the law.” China’s National Health Commission said Saturday that 143 more people have died from the coronavirus, bringing the death toll to more than 1,500. The commission also confirmed another 2,641 new virus cases, however, that represents a drop from higher numbers in recent days. The previous day, China reported 5,090 new infections. China’s government recently changed its methodology for diagnosing and counting new cases, causing a spike in the number of reported cases. Under the new method, doctors can use lung imaging and other analysis to diagnose a patient instead of relying on laboratory testing. China’s National Health Commission said Saturday most of the new deaths were in Hubei’s provincial capital of Wuhan, which is where the coronavirus outbreak is believed to have begun. The total number of confirmed cases in the country stands at 66,492 as of Friday night with the death toll at 1,523, according the commission. On Friday, the commission’s vice minister, Zeng Yixin, said 1,716 health workers have also been infected by the coronavirus and six of them have died.

New virus has infected more than 67,000 people globally – A viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 67,000 people globally. The World Health Organization has named the illness COVID-19, referring to its origin late last year and the coronavirus that causes it. The latest figures reported by each government’s health authority as of Saturday in Beijing:

• – Mainland China: 1,523 deaths among 66,492 cases, mostly in the central province of Hubei ‘
• – Hong Kong: 56 cases, 1 death
• – Macao: 10 cases
• Japan: 337 cases, including 285 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 1 death
• – Singapore: 67 cases
• – Thailand: 34
• – South Korea: 28
• – Malaysia: 22
• – Taiwan: 18
• – Vietnam: 16
• – Germany: 16
• – United States: 15 cases; separately, 1 U.S. citizen died in China

The CDC is preparing for coronavirus ‘to take a foothold in the US’ – During a press call on Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told reporters that it is preparing for the coronavirus to have a greater impact in the U.S. than the 13 confirmed cases. On the phone with reporters was Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who first offered her condolences to the family of the American who died from the virus while living abroad in China. She then continued to say that the CDC’s strategy to combat the virus will change and that the organization continues “to be flexible to meet public health challenges that the virus presents.” Messonnier also stated that the CDC is taking steps to prepare for the coronavirus to “take a foothold in the U.S.” “At some point, we are likely to see community spread in the U.S. or other countries,” she confirmed. Along with communicating with health care facilities and resources, Messonnier says that the CDC is in constant talks with the medical supplies manufacturers, distributors and other health care partners to ensure there are plenty of preventative devices like masks and gloves available in the U.S. in the event of a larger outbreak. Some of these partners have reported higher demand for N95 face masks and respirators. She also took the time to explain the CDC’s recommended use of any preventative supplies, especially face masks. Because the virus isn’t spreading through the community in the U.S., Messonnier only advises using face masks if “you are sick or under investigation and not hospitalized,” before one enters a health care provider’s office, or when caring for a potential infected patient. When alone and at home, however, Messonnier says that people do not need to wear a mask.

CDC confirms 15th US case of coronavirus – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed the 15th case of the coronavirus in the U.S. The patient is among a group of Americans who had been evacuated from Wuhan, China, and is the first under federal quarantine at a military base in Texas. They are being isolated and receiving medical care at a nearby hospital. Nearly all of the confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. have been individuals who had recently traveled in China. The U.S. has evacuated and quarantined more than 800 Americans from Wuhan since the outbreak started last month. Nearly 200 evacuees were released from a quarantine site in California earlier this week. More than 600 evacuees from Wuhan are still in federal quarantine across the U.S. and are being closely monitored to contain the spread of the virus, the CDC said. About 45,000 cases of the coronavirus has been confirmed in China, and 441 others have been identified outside of the country. The Trump administration credits its “aggressive” measures with keeping the number of cases in the U.S. low, including declaring a public health emergency and banning the entrance of foreign nationals into the country who have recently traveled in China. The CDC will begin working with health departments in five cities to test individuals with flu-like symptoms for the coronavirus.

CDC director: More person-to-person coronavirus infections in U.S. likely, but containment still possible – Health officials believe there is still opportunity to prevent widespread transmission of the coronavirus in the United States, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday, even as he warned that more human-to-human transmission here is likely. “We’re still going to see new cases. We’re probably going to see human-to-human transmission within the United States,” Dr. Robert Redfield said in an interview with STAT. He added that “at some point in time it is highly probable that we’ll have to transition to mitigation” as a public health strategy, using “social distancing measures” – for example, closure of certain public facilities – and other techniques to try to limit the number of people who become infected. “We’re not going to be able to seal this virus from coming into this country,” Redfield said. But, he added, “we do gain time by prolonging the containment phase as long as we can, provided that we still believe that’s a useful public health effort. “That’s where we are right now in the United States.” If the United States begins to see instances in several parts of the country in which a single case ignites four “generations” of human-to-human infection, Redfield said – meaning a person who contracted the virus infects a person, who infects another person, who then infects another person – then the CDC is likely to conclude containment of the virus has failed. “Once we get greater than three – so four or more is our view – [generations of] human-to-human transmission in the community … and we see that in multiple areas of the country that are not contiguous, then basically the value of all of the containment strategies that we’ve done now then really become not effective,” he said. “That’s when we’re in full mitigation.” The CDC director’s remarks came as a group of experts that advises the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program recommended that the world stay the current course of trying to halt spread of the new virus to stop it from becoming a human pathogen. That strategy, “containment for elimination,” was successful during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak – though this epidemic is already nearly six times larger than SARS. During the SARS outbreak, roughly 8,000 people were infected and nearly 800 died. Redfield said that China, which has reported more than 45,000 cases to date, has not been able to contain the virus, despite massively restricting internal travel to try to stop it from spreading from Hubei province. The epicenter of the outbreak has been the city of Wuhan, located in Hubei. “Those countries that are still largely seeing cases that are really, like us, directly from Hubei province, there’s reason to still stay in the containment mode rather than turning that off and going right to mitigation. Because once you’re into mitigation, you will probably start to see more cases that may have been able to be contained,” Redfield said.

Chaos Is Coming- US To Start Testing People With Flu Symptoms – Brace for chaos: in a few weeks, the next person to sneeze may be arrested quietly pulled aside by the authorities and tested for coronavirus. People in the US experiencing flu-like symptoms will be screened for the latest coronavirus that originated from China, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced during a briefing on Friday, adding that it will roll out 5 labs, in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Seattle, to screen patients through the ominously sounding “national flu surveillance program”; if that wasn’t bad enough, they also said the program is likely to expand as more confirmed cases are expected in the coming days and weeks. Justifying the move, CDC officials said that there could be undetected cases of the mysterious illness in communities across the US, as the country experiences a dramatic spike in flu as the season approaches its halfway point. The agency plans to expand to more cities until it has achieved “national surveillance”. “They are currently testing for influenza. The idea is they will test the influenza negative specimens,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. There are now 15 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US and more than 600 people remain in quarantine. Which, of course is a prudent move, if only it weren’t for the fact that tens of millions of Americans are about to get sick as we enter the peak of flu season, and every sneeze or cough will lead to panicked phone calls to the local ER (or police), and potentially in self-imposed quarantine as more and more Americans await an “all clear” signal before life returns back to normal. Alas, with the coronavirus pandemic running rampang in China, this may not happen for many month. Global cases of the virus have topped 64,000, including hundreds of health workers in China as it battles to contain the virus following its outbreak in Wuhan. In the US, there have been 15th confirmed coronavirus infections while more than 1,300 people have died in China (it would have been even more had China not somehow “double-counted” the dead). The latest case in the US involves a patient who was among a group of people under a federal quarantine order in Texas following a US government-chartered flight that evacuated US citizens from China earlier this month. Meanwhile, health officials report 26 million flu infections in the US so far this season, including 14,000 deaths.

Coronavirus outbreak exposes a weak link in the U.S. drug supply – STAT – In the 21st century, Americans have found it far too easy to be complacent about public health emergencies like the ongoing coronavirus outbreak of the newly named Covid-19 that began in China and has since spread to other countries, including the U.S. To be fair, it has been more than 50 years since the last federal quarantine was issued, to control a deadly smallpox outbreak. A half-century gap is bound to instill a false sense of security, even when taking more recent threats into consideration. Fuzzy recollections are a symptom of a much larger problem: In the memory gap between outbreak and eradication lives a growing threat to health care delivery – and to national security. In October 2019, Dr. Janet Woodcock, the director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, testified before Congress that the United States “has become a world leader in drug discovery and development, but is no longer in the forefront of drug manufacturing.”Woodcock identified as a key health and security concern the cessation of U.S. manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), the basic building blocks of medications. She testified that 72% of API manufacturing takes place outside the U.S., and that the number of facilities making APIs in China has more than doubled since 2010.The use of foreign-sourced materials “creates vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain,” Woodcock concluded.Her concerns are not unfounded. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission echoed Woodcock’s worries. In its 2019 report to Congress, the commission revealed “serious deficiencies in health and safety standards in China’s pharmaceutical sector.”The commission found a poorly regulated industry enabled by Beijing’s refusal to cooperate with routine FDA inspections. This stonewalling, coupled with the small number of FDA inspectors in the country to oversee a large number of producers and outright fraud perpetrated by Chinese manufacturers, is a recipe for disaster.The coronavirus outbreak is drawing much-needed attention to the possibility of a global health crisis. But awareness isn’t enough. Without action from policymakers, our dependence upon China for medications will continue to put American lives at risk. The number of Chinese facilities that make active pharmaceutical ingredients is still growing. Although we cannot yet quantify the U.S.’s dependence on pharmaceutical ingredients made in China, we do know that the more Chinese products flow into the U.S., the more potential there is for trouble.

Email scam uses coronavirus to target global industries: report – Hackers are using concerns about the how the coronavirus might affect global shipping to target various industries, new research released Monday from cybersecurity group Proofpoint found. Proofpoint found that hackers, most likely based in Russia and Eastern Europe, recently used malicious emails containing information on the impact of the coronavirus on the global shipping industry to target the manufacturing, industrial, financial, pharmaceutical, cosmetics and transportation sectors. As part of these emails, a Microsoft Word document was attached to the email, with the document containing an information-stealing malware virus known as “AZORult” that exploited an old vulnerability to install the malware on the victim’s system. Sherrod DeGrippo, the senior director of Threat Research at Proofpoint, said in a statement that the attacks show the hackers are “economically sophisticated” and are looking at the impact of the coronavirus on the global economy instead of just at related health concerns. “These attacks take Coronavirus-themed attacks in a direction people might not expect away from health-related concerns and towards secondary, economic-related concerns, in this case the possible impact of Coronavirus on global shipping,” DeGrippo said. The research was released two days after the global death toll from coronavirus officially hit 800, surpassing the number of people who died from the SARS virus in 2003. Both viruses originated in China, portions of which have been quarantined over the past few weeks to stop the spread of the coronavirus. As a result of fears surrounding the virus, misinformation online has spiked, with social media companies scrambling to contain the spread of false information and to direct users towards facts. DeGrippo cautioned that companies within the sectors targeted by the attackers should be cautious in opening anything related to the coronavirus.

The coronavirus is the first true social-media “infodemic” – On January 19 – a week before the Lunar New Year – the local government had assured people that it would only affect those who visited a specific food market and contracted it directly from wild animals. But on the night of the 20th, Dr. Zhong Nanshan – the same doctor who first revealed the extent of SARS in 2003 – went on national TV to correct the record. The virus could spread from person to person, he said. Panic ensued. Overnight, everyone in the city began wearing masks. Tang and his girlfriend placed themselves in a 14-day quarantine, leaving their apartment only once a day, with masks, to take out the trash. On the third day of quarantine, Tang went into a panic when he opened the apps to see everything completely sold out. On February 2, the World Health Organization dubbed the new coronavirus “a massive ‘infodemic,’” referring to “an overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” It’s a distinction that sets the coronavirus apart from previous viral outbreaks. While SARS, MERS, and Zika all caused global panic, fears around the coronavirus have been especially amplified by social media. It has allowed disinformation to spread and flourish at unprecedented speeds, creating an environment of heightened uncertainty that has fueled anxiety and racism in person and online.For its part, the WHO has attempted to address the issue by partnering with Twitter, Facebook, Tencent, and TikTok to clamp down on misinformation. It recently launched a Google SOS alert, for example, to push WHO information to the top of people’s search results for coronavirus-related queries. It has also been working with Facebook to target specific populations and demographics with ads that provide important health information. It has even gone so far as to reach out to influencers in Asia to try to keep disinformation at bay. Social-media and health organizations have also engaged in efforts of their own. TikTok has tried to remove purposely misleading videos, saying in a statement that it would “not permit misinformation that could cause harm to our community or the larger public.” Facebook has also worked to scrub posts with dubious health advice, and Tencent, the owner of WeChat has used its fact-checking platform to scrutinize coronavirus rumors circulating online. But the sheer avalanche of content has overwhelmed the coordinated efforts to clear out all the noise. This in turn has created a breeding ground for xenophobic content. Racist memes and slurs have proliferated on TikTok and Facebook. Some teens have even gone about faking a coronavirus diagnosis to earn themselves more social-media clout. This online toxicity has also translated into in-person interactions. Asians havefaced outright racism and harassment, and Chinatowns and Chinese restaurants have seen business lag.

Coronavirus Oil Demand Destruction is Unprecedented – Oil traders often quip that if China sneezes, the oil market catches a cold. For the global crude market it is the undisputed leading importer of crude oil consuming on average 14 million barrels per day (bpd). Now China has indeed caught that metaphorical cold, and physically much more than that in the shape of the Coronavirus outbreak that has seen its government quarantine whole townships, shutter factories, shopping malls, offices and transportation hubs. The default implication is that there will be lower economic activity in China and therefore much lower crude consumption. Valid market fears that the first quarter of 2020 is likely to result in Chinese headline growth of 5% or less, has every international body from the International Monetary Fund to the International Energy Agency (IEA) scrambling to assess its impact on a global scale. Industry surveys are split on how much lower China’s crude oil demand could be with estimates pointing to a decline of between 18% and 25% over the quarter. Meanwhile, there are several reports of Chinese importers looking to sell off unwanted crude in transit to destinations elsewhere, lending credence to demand destruction in China no matter how temporary it eventually turns out to be. Even at the median market projection of a 21.5% decline, that still equates to 3.01 million bpd of crude oil that China will not need over the quarter. Benchmarked against the oil demands of selected G7 economies, the decline figure would be a mere 56,000 bpd more than Canada’s entire consumption rate in 2018, or 14,000 bpd more than that of the U.K. and Italy combined. And the implications for the crude market are not only related to China’s domestic issues. There is the domino effect to consider in terms of trade flows and its global impact. The outbreak has spread to over 20 countries and led to nearly 500 deaths. One obvious casualty would be aviation not just within and to/from China but globally, with fewer travellers, higher restrictions and global health related wariness over flying. There will inevitably be lower calls on jet fuel in Asia and many international air carriers have temporarily suspended flights to China. According to Reuters, on the U.S. West Coast, jet fuel prices have taken a severe knock as cheaper supplies are being sent into the region from Asian markets. Jet fuel for delivery into Los Angeles JET-LA was down 25% on January, to $1.5997 on Monday (February 3) from $2.1266 a gallon, traders told the newswire. While that might make airplanes cheaper to fill up, lower number of passengers and fewer flights in its wake would again drive consumption lower. Make no mistake, even if the global implications are sidestepped, and only China’s possible standalone loss of 3 million bpd or thereabout is countenanced, the global oil market has not seen a demand destruction event of this magnitude moving this quickly.

Airline growth hit as virus depletes Singapore Airshow – (Reuters) – Asian airlines warned of “drastic” cuts in 2020 growth plans because of the coronavirus crisis, adding gloom to an already depleted Singapore Airshow as more firms dropped out. Asia’s top aerospace event is going ahead. But a purpose-built aero exhibition centre is pockmarked with empty spaces reserved for Chinese companies and others skipping the show because of the outbreak, whose death toll exceeds 900. Major suppliers Honeywell (HON.N) and Leonardo (LDOF.MI) joined a list of 70 no-shows on Monday amid concerns related to the new coronavirus, which first erupted in China. Although riddled with hype and pre-packaged announcements, air shows are widely seen as a litmus test of confidence in the aerospace industry and bring together tens of thousands of people to network around cabin mock-ups and arms stalls. But few deals are expected at the Feb 11-16 Singapore event, where the epidemic has triggered new safety measures and cast a shadow over airline profits and demand for airplanes. Fresh evidence of the impact emerged on the eve of the show as UK-based consultancy Ascend by Cirium said the number of flights scheduled to operate to, from and within China had dropped by 24% compared with expectations before the crisis. Worse, the number of flights actually operated was down by half compared with normal seasonal levels as many airlines continued to slash flights below their newly adjusted schedules. That means Asian airlines are bracing for a turbulent 2020. Cancellations bring costs in lost revenue and ticket rebates.

Coronavirus live updates: China smartphone shipments predicted to fall in Q1 – China’s smartphone shipments for the three months ending in March could decline by more than 30% from the same period a year ago, International Data Corporation said on Tuesday. The outbreak affected the Lunar New Year’s shopping season in late January and is also expected to have adverse effects in the following months, IDC said in a statement, adding that it expects “China’s smartphone shipments to drop more than 30% year-on-year in 2020Q1.” China’s movie theaters were ramping up for one of their biggest sales seasons of the year – hiring extra staff and buying more supplies – when the new coronavirus hit. Now most theaters have been closed for about two weeks, and it may be months before consumers have enough confidence to see the movies in theaters again. One theater manager says it’s the biggest shutdown in 20 years – even SARS in 2003 didn’t have such a great impact. Theater operators now have to negotiate with landlords over potentially tens of thousands of yuan a month in rent, and manage other costs without any income in the meantime. It’s just one example of how businesses are getting hit by virus-related disruptions, and how the Chinese government is now rushing to announce policies to support the privately run, small businesses that contribute to more than half of economic growth. Global energy research and consultancy group Wood Mackenzie said it estimated gas demand loss in China had reached 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) by the end of the first week of February. More than half of that loss was concentrated in the industrial sector, according to research director Robert Sims. Many factories had shut down production for an extended period after the Lunar New Year holidays as part of China’s efforts to stop the virus from spreading further. Experts have agreed that there will be a significant economic impact on China as well as the rest of the world for at least the three-months that end in March. Sims said the impact on Chinese gas demand will depend on both the severity and length of time required to contain the outbreak. “With a resumption in economic activity, although limited, we estimate a full-year gas demand reduction of between 6 bcm and 14 bcm in 2020,” he said in a report. Year-on-year growth rates are expected to also drop from the 8% outlook predicted prior to the outbreak.

Hundreds of millions of chickens at risk of being wiped out with much of China locked down due to virus – Following its pork crisis, China’s poultry farmers are now in dire straits because of the coronavirus outbreak. Millions of chickens may soon perish in coming days as much-needed feed is not getting to them in time. The shutdowns in China’s provinces have hit supply chains, with transport restrictions preventing much needed animal feed such as soybean meal from getting delivered to poultry farms, according to analysts and Chinese state media. As the outbreak spread, Chinese authorities have shut roads and highways, and even halted long-distance buses. This is going to create massive problems in the livestock sector. Even if a local plant has resumed operations, it will still be longer than normal for delivery due to logistics problems. The supply of soybean meal is short to begin with, said financial services company INTL FCStone in a note on Monday, adding that the extension of business shutdowns will exacerbate the shortage. “This is going to create massive problems in the livestock sector. Even if a local plant has resumed operations, it will still be longer than normal for delivery due to logistics problems (lack of labor, road closures, road checks),” wrote Darin Friedrichs, senior Asia commodity analyst at company INTL FCStone. “I think in many regions the transport issue (is impacting) the chicken production. It is expected that not only Q1 production but Q2 would be impacted,” Chenjun Pan, senior analyst at Rabobank, told CNBC. Already, farmers in Hubei – the epicenter of the virus outbreak – are in a “very distressed” situation, Hubei’s poultry association wrote in a letter to the national-level China Animal Agriculture Association last week. The letter said transportation is basically paralyzed, and most large-scale farms will face severe shortage of feed soon, which will hit operations. The China Animal Agriculture Association asked feed producers to send 18,000 tons of corn and 12,000 tons of soybean meal to Hubei. According to China’s state-owned Global Times, there are around 348 million chickens in Hubei, which is the sixth largest poultry producing province in China. Hubei, also a key egg producer, slaughters about 500 million birds each year. Poultry businesses in Hubei are “in dire need” of feed, said Global Times in a piece over the weekend, adding that existing stocks would only last between three to five days. It cited farmers who said millions of chickens will soon die without new supplies. Some farmers have been reducing daily feeds in order to make supplies last longer, the report said.

Xi warned officials that efforts to stop virus could hurt economy: sources – (Reuters) – Chinese President Xi Jinping warned top officials last week that efforts to contain the new coronavirus had gone too far, threatening the country’s economy, sources told Reuters, days before Beijing rolled out measures to soften the blow. With growth at its slowest in nearly three decades, China’s leaders seem eager to strike a balance between protecting an already-slowing economy and stamping out an epidemic that has killed more than 1,000 people and infected more than 40,000. After reviewing reports on the outbreak from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and other economic departments, Xi told local officials during a Feb 3 meeting of the Politburo’s Standing Committee that some of the actions taken to contain the virus are harming the economy, said two people familiar with the meeting, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter. He urged them to refrain from “more restrictive measures”, the two people said. Local authorities outside Wuhan – where the virus is thought to have first taken hold – have shut down schools and factories, sealed off roads and railways, banned public events and even locked down residential compounds. Xi said some of those steps have not been practical and have sown fear among the public, they said. China’s state council information office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The coronavirus fallout is ‘battering’ African economies, Capital Economics says -The indirect economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak is hitting Africa, with the sharp fall in commodity prices “battering” economies across the continent, according to Capital Economics. Much of the international ripple effect from China’s mass shutdowns has been concentrated in areas like tourism and manufacturing, which have been roiled by a ban on outbound tour groups and supply chain disruption arising from factory closures. However, port closures in China are causing oil importers to cancel purchases and forcing sellers to look elsewhere, John Ashbourne, senior emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, highlighted in a note Friday. In Angola, state-owned petroleum and natural gas company Sonangol has already been forced to re-sell at a discount at least one shipment which was already en route, according to Ashbourne. “While the price effect will hit all of Africa’s commodity exporters, these trade disruptions will mostly affect West African oil exporters,” Ashbourne said. Brent crude prices have been in steep decline since the outbreak hit the headlines, down 16.96% since the turn of the year, and was trading at just over $54 a barrel on Monday afternoon. Other base metals heavily relied upon by the African export market, such as iron ore and copper, have also seen sharp depreciations in recent weeks. In terms of economic exposure, industrial commodity exports from Republic of the Congo amount to almost 70% of GDP (gross domestic product) with exports to China accounting for more than 50% of total GDP. Angola relies on Chinese industrial commodity exports for more than 20% of GDP. Other countries with significant exposure include Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Ghana. Though the virus itself has not yet been diagnosed on the continent, experts have warned that the subcontinent is susceptible given its strong ties to China. Last week, upon declaring the virus a global health emergency, World Health Organization (WHO) Chief Tedros Adhanom said the body’s “greatest concern” was the potential for it to reach countries with “weaker health systems.”

What Will Be the Spillover Effects of the Coronavirus on India Inc? Even as the business community across the globe is keeping its fingers crossed on the eventual impact of the coronavirus in China, a view is fast gaining ground that New Delhi has to be nimble-footed in not only blunting the virus’s effect on the country but also leveraging it to India’s advantage. A sense of apprehension is quite palpable as industry leaders have spoken out about possible disruption to the broader supply chain. In the last few days, major players in India’s pharma and mobile phones industries have noted how if the shutdown continues, local production and supply of everything from handsets to a few generic drugs may come to a halt. “The bigger issue is that the supply chain constraint is also likely to hit India. It will take at least 2-3 months for the supply chain to get back to the normal mode and hence, there will be some amount of disruption in the global supply chain till that time,” said the head of an auto component major in Chennai, who did not want to be named. “China is an integral part of the global supply chain, including for the automotive sector. The more advanced the technology, the more likely that those parts are being made in China. A lot of the players, including those in the passenger vehicles segment, are affected in the current scenario. While the Chinese government has said that factories can start functioning, the issue relates to third-party logistics services where the truck transporters typically use drivers who are migrants and the question is whether they will be allowed back immediately. A lot of the ports are fully blocked,” he continued. Given the issues relating to China, of late there has been a focus on de-risking, including in the automotive and hi-tech industries. Some of the businesses in the mobile phone space have already gone to Vietnam. “India has to pitch with the large MNCs who have factories in China to get a part of their businesses to India,” he added. Also read: Coronavirus Disrupted the Release of a Chinese Movie. Here’s How the Studio Responded. Auto industry sources also pointed out that China has not been as cost competitive as in the past. “For quite some time, global companies have been looking at options to build supply chain capabilities in India as an alternative to China. There is generally a move to look at de-risking. The fact that global companies are looking at non- Chinese options is an opportunity for India,” an auto industry source said. “The other option that the global companies are looking at is creating a manufacturing hub in India by recreating what they did in China in the past and using India as a manufacturing export base,” said a ranking official of an auto component company. “India is in a good position to take advantage of this, though the Chinese scale is huge. But there are some segments which are supply chain-based to create some kind of manufacturing hub. The government should look at job creation by expanding industries (even if MNCs create those jobs) within India. Trade-related competition from other countries should be viewed from the point of creating enough employment in the country. That is when India will grow faster,” the official said.

The Cow Dung Cure for Coronavirus – WSJ – India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote this week to Xi Jinping, offering the Chinese leader help in tackling the Wuhan coronavirus. Details of the assistance aren’t public, but Mr. Modi’s offer probably didn’t include supplies for a “treatment” that a senior Hindu fundamentalist advocated recently. Swami Chakrapani Maharaj, president of the Hindu Mahasabha – a century-old organization that advocates Hindutva (or “Hinduness”) – declared that “consuming cow urine and cow dung will stop the effect of infectious coronavirus.”…

Coronavirus Update: Virus May Push Germany Into Recession Due To Close Trade Links – Germany, already reeling from a weakening manufacturing sector, could be pushed into a recession by the fallout from the ongoing coronavirus epidemic.Deutsche Bank warned in a report on Wednesday that Europe’s largest economy will experience a small contraction in the fourth quarter and is unlikely to witness a recovery in 2020.“The coronavirus presents a risk to the global recovery as it dampens hopes for a revival in the Chinese economy,” said Stefan Schneider, an economist at Deutsche Bank. “A technical recession… therefore seems increasingly likely.”Schneider estimated the virus will result in a 0.2 percentage point reduction in Germany’s gross domestic product for the three-month period through March – meaning two straight quarters of contraction, the definition of a recession. Germany’s export-heavy economy is very dependent upon China. Germany’s all-important automotive industry is particularly vulnerable to a Chinese slowdown — about one-third of all German vehicle exports (5.2 million units) went to in China in 2019.In addition, German carmakers have about 30 production facilities in China, while German auto parts suppliers have more than 300 locations in China. However, Deutsche Bank also noted that “if the spread of the coronavirus soon peaks as expected, demand [for German products] may simply shift to the later course of 2020.”

Royal Caribbean Cancels 18 Cruises As Thousands Remain Trapped Aboard ‘Diamond Princess’ – Cruise ship operators across the world, especially in Asia, are experiencing a crisis with few precedents.The Covid-19 outbreak that started in China has spread across the region, and around the world – it’s currently confirmed to be present in nearly 30 countries and territories. For cruise lines, the outbreak has been one public relations disaster after another, with passengers quarantined on ships such as the World Dream in Hong Kong and Carnival Corp.’s Diamond Princess in Japan.Another incident involving a cruise ship with possibly infected passengers unfolded on Thursday, this time in Sydney. What would be the fifth cruise ship to face some level of quarantine (or some other form of trouble) since the outbreak went global last month is currently being held under a quarantine order in Sydney Harbor.The leading cruise ship operator in Asia, Carnival Corporation & plc, published a press release on Wednesday detailing that if it suspended all operations across Asia until the end of April due to the virus outbreak, then it would realize a severe financial impact. “…if the company had to suspend all of its operations in Asia through the end of April, this would impact its fiscal 2020 financial performance by $0.55 to $0.65 per share, which includes guest compensation.” With the virus outbreak worsening, and China shockingly reporting a massive jump in new infections on Wednesday-Thursday due to a “change in the definition” of how it counted confirmed cases, resulting in a surge of nearly 20,000 cases over the two days, the outlook for cruise operators is only getting worse. This leaves the big cruise ship operators facing a serious dilemma:

Option 1) contain virus, preserve life & Cause serious Sharp Economic Slowdown

Option 2) Let virus spread & globally 50 – 100 Million could die, With Long, Slow, milder Economic impact

However, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. appears to have finally made the right call on Thursday evening after it announced it would suspend 18 lines. The short-term impact is a 65-cent-per-share hit on earnings for the year, but at least it would prevent further spreading of the virus and limit PR disasters such as what’s happening on Carnival Corp.-owned ‘Diamond Princess’ – the ship currently trapped in Yokohama, Japan with more than 174 infected.Cruise ships, hotels, and restaurants in China have been roiled by the virus, even in surrounding countries. Travel restrictions to and from China by many of other countries have crippled the world’s tourism industry as the outbreak continues to worsen with no vaccine for 18 months.Royal Caribbean also said that fears of the virus outbreak have spread beyond Asia. “While the early impact due to concerns about the coronavirus is mainly related to Asia, recent bookings for our broader business have also been softer,” the operator said.

The Humanitarian And Business Impacts Of The Coronavirus – As of this writing, the virus has infected thousands and killed hundreds. With the situation growing grimmer each day, and talk of pandemic increasingly in the news, Chinese authorities have shut down the city of Wuhan (where the virus originated) as well as 16 other cities across the country – reportedly quarantining an estimated 50 million people. It is estimated that 70% of the global supply of raw materials is controlled by China. Thus, when China starts shutting down its borders, the effects are felt everywhere. Already, the auto sector is starting to halt production due to an inability to obtain parts from Chinese sources. Hyundai, for example, has shut down production at 3 factories in South Korea because it can’t get critical wiring harnesses from a Chinese supplier. Within China, virtually all of the major car companies have shut down production. But the auto industry is not alone. Companies like Bosch have also halted production in China. It’s instructive to look back on the SARS virus of 2003 and compare then to now. Just 17 years ago, China was significantly less globally integrated. For example, as China estimates, the number of trips taken by outbound tourists from China in 2003 stood at 16.6 million. By 2018, the number was 149.7 million. This 800% increase is just one of many measures that reminds us that global integration has increased dramatically over the past couple of decades. Today, supply chains are globally integrated like never before – and, like never before, they are uniquely susceptible to disruptions. Companies operating on the global stage need to be prepared for supply chain disruptions. These disruptions are happening now and will likely become more common moving forward. From trade wars and political unrest to climate change events and the threat of pandemics, change is here to stay.The rational response for any company in this situation is to do whatever possible to minimize risk by increasing supply chain agility. It’s difficult to tell what will happen with the spread of the coronavirus, but we can certainly understand what the virus is telling us in terms of how we deal with disruptions. Clearly, we need to find ways to keep goods flowing through vulnerable, globally integrated supply chains.

China cannot fight coronavirus and avert an economic crisis at the same time – Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. China must be nearing the point where the social and economic costs of trying to stamp out the coronavirus by totalitarian methods are greater than the trauma of letting it run.A normal country would eventually conclude that the more rational course is to accept that the disease can no longer be contained (given the three lost weeks of the Wuhan cover-up), treat it as a form of turbo-charged winter flu, and direct all efforts instead at managing care more coherently.The focus would then shift to a different objective: trying to lower the death rate from apparent 1918 Spanish flu levels of 2pc to plausible levels below 1pc – still 10 times influenza flu – through anti-virals, IV drips, oxygen, and all kinds of small frictions (yes, even face masks) to lower dose thresholds and potentially virulence.But China is not normal and the Communist Party cannot easily follow this logic. It has almost certainly gone beyond the point of no return by declaring a “people’s war” and imposing lockdowns of different sorts on more than 400 million people, and by implicitly making defeat of the contagion a test of its ruling legitimacy. It seems condemned to doubling down at this point since Guangzhou, Chongqing, and Changsha are already riddled with the virus. This political choice has big global economic consequences. Taoran Notes – the voice of Xi Jinping’s inner circle and the medium that China experts follow very closely – hinted last night at a very nasty policy of police/military coercion in Hubei and virus hotspots. Anybody who is possibly infected must be “rounded up and placed in quarantine centers”. It is going to be Uighur treatment for tens of millions, or indeed a page from Mao’s most demented moments of social and economic havoc. Taoran also says that Xi enforcer Chen Yixn – a sort of Beria for those familiar with Stalinism – is being sent to take over Wuhan and impose the new security regime. Regions making up two-thirds of Chinese GDP have been closed since late January. It appears that few people have actually returned to work this week. There are a number of proxy measures to keep track of this. One is traffic congestion across 100 cities published daily with a slight delay by AMAP, China’s version of Google maps. So far there is no visible rebound. Another is property sales in 30 big cities released every day (amazingly). Sales have collapsed to zero and have yet to show a flicker of life. Capital Economics updates each chart daily on its coronavirus page, open to the general public. Some 25 provinces and municipalities were supposed to go back to work this week but this clashed head on with virus control measures. Companies may not reopen plants unless they can track the exact movements and medical data of each worker, and comply with a 14-day quarantine period where necessary (we now learn the incubation may in fact be 24 days). Officials dare not be lenient after Xi Jinping’s latest tirade. The Guangzhou authorities have ordered plants to remain closed until early March in large parts of the city with warnings of ferocious penalties. Apple supplier Foxconn has yet to restart its core iPhone plants in Zhengzhou and Shenzhen. Just 10pc of its workers have turned up. Caixin reports that Foxconn may wait until March before restarting. Meanwhile the near complete shutdown of Shanghai’s manufacturing hub in Songjiang belied early claims that 70pc of plants were going back to work.

Chinese Copper Buyers Cancel Orders Around The Globe As Economy Grinds To A Halt – While Beijing has been doing everything in its power to keep equity markets artificially supported to avoid a collapse in the precious “wealth effect” and investor sentiment, throwing the kitchen sink at equities and in addition to a record liquidity injection… .. rate and tax cuts, and various fiscal stimulus measures, outright banning the shorting of stocks, there is one indicator that Beijing has been unable to manipulate. Ominously, it is the one indicator that leads overall Chinese output and suggests that the world’s 2nd largest economy has hit a brick wall.We are talking, of course, about Dr. copper, that age-old barometer for the health of the global economy, which after rebounding modestly from a record 13-day drop, has once again resumed sliding, in the process creating a gaping divergence with the US equity market, which so far has shown an immunity – so to speak – to any concerns about viruses or frankly anything else.But why is the price of copper plunging, and why has this most popular barometer for the state of the global economy disconnected from both Chinese stocks and the S&P500?Simple: while China’s “National Team” still has enough firepower to intervene in the stock market, where it can just outright ban selling and print any amount of liquidity it needs to push stocks higher, it lacks the funds to offset the collapse in demand from Chinese copper buyers on the ground, who have seen the writing on the wall for China’s economy – the world’s largest buyer of the orange metal – and have literally torn up contracts, or as the FT reports, “copper traders in China… have asked miners from Chile to Nigeria to cancel or delay shipments” due to a freefall in copper demand.According to the report, “multiple Chinese copper buyers said they had scrapped or postponed overseas orders by declaring force majeure since the end of January, when Beijing began to report a surge in coronavirus infections.” As for the reason why copper demand is collapsing, China’s efforts to contain the virus, ranging from restricting highway traffic to extending the lunar new year holiday, have affected industrial activity and raised concerns about growth in the world’s second-biggest economy. In fact, as we reported on Friday, according to JPMorgan China’s Q1 GDP is already set to plunge from 6% to 1%… It’s not just copper that is seeing an implosion in demand: Chinese buyers of liquefied natural gas have also considered declaring force majeure, a clause that identifies natural disasters or other unavoidable catastrophes as cause for not fulfilling a contract.

China Auto Sales Plunge In January; And February Could Be Much, Much Worse – Auto sales in China were crushed in January, declining 20.2% on a year over year basis, according to the government-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. The country sold 1.94 million vehicles, according to the CAAM. The decline is attributable, obviously, to the coronavirus outbreak in the country, combined with the lunar new year falling in late January, as opposed to early February, this year. And, unfortunately, there is literally no reason for optimism coming into February, as it was the end of January and early February when China was placed essentially on a full lockdown due to the outbreak of the virus. In fact, we just wrote yesterday that auto industry executives are admitting that the virus could “wreak havoc” on sales and production for the first quarter, according to the Asia Times. Automakers across the country have been forced to cancel sales targets and offer subsidies to hold over dealers during the outbreak. The coronavirus has now killed over 1,300 people (if you are to believe the CCP’s likely understated numbers) and more than 60,000 people are now confirmed to be infected in China.Just days ago, we reported about a major inventory glut looming in the Chinese auto market, as well. Accordingly, we noted, traffic to showrooms has collapsed across the country since late January. A China Automobile Dealer’s association poll shows that dealers predict a drastic drop in sales of 50% to 80% this month, compared to February 2019. 70% of dealers have said they have seen “almost no customers” since the end of January. The CADA said auto sales “show a cliff-like decline”. Sales of EV vehicles also plunged in January, falling 54% as a result not only of the outbreak, but Beijing becoming more hawkish on their subsidy policies heading into the back end of 2019. We noted in December that NEV sales plunged 42% in November after Beijing first backed away. The government is ostensibly dedicating all of its efforts to deal with the country’s ongoing outbreak, and so Beijing has not revisited its comments about EVs yet, and we are already halfway through Q1 2020.

China Is Disintegrating- Steel Demand, Property Sales, Traffic All Approaching Zero – In our ongoing attempts to glean some objective insight into what is actually happening “on the ground” in the notoriously opaque China, whose economy has been hammered by the Coronavirus epidemic, yesterday we showed several “alternative” economic indicators such as real-time measurements of air pollution (a proxy for industrial output), daily coal consumption (a proxy for electricity usage and manufacturing) and traffic congestion levels (a proxy for commerce and mobility), before concluding that China’s economy appears to have ground to a halt. That conclusion was cemented after looking at some other real-time charts which suggest that there is a very high probability that China’s GDP in Q1 will not only flatline, but crater deep in the red for one simple reason: there is no economic activity taking place whatsoever. We start with China’s infrastructure and fixed asset investment, which until recently accounted for the bulk of Chinese GDP. As Goldman writes in an overnight report, in the Feb 7-13 week, steel apparent demand is down a whopping 40%, but that’s only because flat steel is down “only” 12% Y/Y as some car plants have ordered their employee to return to work (likely against their will as the epidemic still rages).However, it is the far more important – for China’s GDP – construction steel sector where apparent demand has literally hit the bottom of the chart, down an unprecedented 88% Y/Y or as Goldman puts it, “construction steel demand is approaching zero.” But wait, there’s more.Courtesy of Capital Economics, which has compiled a handy breakdown of real-time China indicators, we can see the full extent of just how pervasive the crash in China’s economy has been, starting with familiar indicator, the average road congestion across 100 Chinese cities, which has collapsed into the New Year and has since failed to rebound.Parallel to this, daily passenger traffic has also flatlined since the New Year and has yet to post an even modest rebound.And the biggest shocker: a total collapse in passenger traffic (measured in person-km y/y % change), largely due to the quarantine that has been imposed on hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens. And while we already noted the plunge in coal consumption in power plants as Chinese electricity use has cratered… … what is perhaps most striking, is the devastation facing the Chinese real estate sector where property sales across 30 major cities have basically frozen.Finally, and most ominously perhaps, as the economy craters and internal supply chains fray, prices for everyday staples such as food are soaring as China faces not only economic collapse, but also surging prices for critical goods, such as food as shown in the wholesale food price index chart below… … which in a nation of 1.4 billion is a catastrophic mix.

Viral Alarm: When Fury Overcomes Fear China Files. – In July 2018, the Tsinghua University professor Xu Zhangrun published an unsparing critique of the Chinese Communist Party and its Chairman of Everything, Xi Jinping. Xu warned of the dangers of one-man rule, a sycophantic bureaucracy, putting politics ahead of professionalism and the myriad other problems that the system would encounter if it rejected further reforms. That philippic was one of a cycle of works that Xu wrote during a year in which he alerted his readers to pressing issues related to China’s momentous struggle with modernity, the state of the nation under Xi Jinping and the mixed prospects for its future. Those essays will be published in a collection titled Six Chapters from the 2018 Year of the Dog by Hong Kong City University Press in May this year.Although he was demoted by Tsinghua University in March 2019 and banned from teaching, writing and publishing, Xu has remained defiant. His latest polemical work – “When Fury Overcomes Fear” – translated below, appeared online on February 4, 2020 as the coronavirus epidemic swept China and infections overseas sparked concern around the world.Xu‘s writing style combines elements of classical Chinese in which references to or quotations from philosophy, history and literature are seamlessly interwoven in an elegant but highly personalized literary form commonly employed by members of China’s élite from the late-19th to the mid-20th centuries. It is a prose free of Party jargon, although the author frequently makes mocking reference to officialese and to the kind of Europeanized Chinese popularized in the 1910s when the vernacular was promoted by political and cultural progressives. Although the written language became more expressive of modern ideas it was soon overwhelmed by a kind of Communist Partyspeak that now dominates China’s media.In translating Xu’s work I hint at the orotund style of the original and occasionally use capital letters and or quotation marks to emphasize terms that have a particular significance for the author. Xu never refers to Xi Jinping by name, rather he employs various classical (and sometimes cheekily arcane) terms to lampoon the “People’s Leader.” “When Fury Overcomes Fear” is translated and annotated here with the author’s permission.

.