CoVid-19 Part VIII - 292 cases ROI (2 deaths) 62 in NI (as of 17th March) *Read OP*

Cheerful Spring2 wrote: »

My mate is ex army, his retired over a year plus. Drove APCs for the army. That not in the news yet the Irish army has asked ex army to help!

The Oort Cloud wrote: »

What's up with this ex minister for social protection?

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Do we all feel like we have it ? Or is it just me who is paranoid.
Taking huge breaths, forehead aching, muscle pain.

We apologize for the temporary disservice that you may have experienced. For about 20 minutes, our site showed clearly incorrect data due to a malicious act. We have investigated the issue and we're now implementing protective measures to prevent this from happening again. The other day we got hit with a big DDoS attack. Now this. We'll continue with our daily efforts and we'll not give up.

Syncpolice wrote: »

Virus expert on LBC tomorrow 1am answering questions

Opinion
Grant Wilson
Australia’s economy will collapse in Q2

The Morrison government's plan to protect the economy and the health of Australians needs to change. The sooner it does the better.
Grant Wilson Contributor
Mar 15, 2020 – 10.57am

Unprecedented decisions await in Canberra this week.

Thus far the Morrison government has presented the coronavirus outbreak in mutually inclusive terms. According to the plan, we can protect the health of Australians, while keeping Australians in jobs and Australian businesses in business. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The plan will need to change. The sooner it does, the better.

There is a grim logic here, that we are reluctant to unpack. But we know, from our vantage, that it will predominate in the months ahead, both in financial markets and in public policy circles.

The conclusion is straight-forward: beyond the chronic global shortage of testing equipment for coronavirus, many countries will soon face an exhaustion of available medical infrastructure for those cases deemed as severe.

These cases will be heavily skewed to the elderly cohort, where the observed case fatality rate is much higher. Selective treatment protocols will be deployed, as we have seen in Wuhan and Lombardy.

Yet if the outbreak continues unabated, it will overwhelm all available facilities, leaving even those requiring access to facilities to cope for themselves.

The Morrison government has announced a $17.6 billion coronavirus stimulus package, but will it be enough. Getty

It will be said that most cases of coronavirus are mild and do not require admission to an intensive care unit (ICU). That is true. But ICU capacity, inclusively defined, clearly looms as a binding constraint in terms of policy formulation.

On this front, the data is hard to find. Our chart uses strictly accredited sources, thus the data are not timely. Still, it is a good starting point.

From there, various assumptions need to be made, relating to the path of the outbreak, as against the current use of ICU capacity, the turnover of cases, the availability of ventilators, and critically, the availability of front-line medical professionals (our new firies).

There are also now aggressive steps underway to scale the infrastructure, and to re-tool alternatives, as difficult as that is to do in rapid time.

The conclusion stands. In many countries, a point of exhaustion looms. Beyond that point, the case fatality rate for coronavirus will rise, with attendant social, economic and political consequences. Unfortunately, this point is not very far away.

We highlighted last weekend that Australia is relatively well placed to manage the violent pivot as between the East and the West that is now well underway.

On this constraint, however, we are not. Eleven per cent of Australians, some 2.8 million, are aged 70 or more. Others will have pre-existing health conditions that will increase the susceptibility to coronavirus, and increase the load on Australia’s medical system.

There will be no feasible way to scale this infrastructure in the event of sustained community-based transmission. Many Australians will die without access to appropriate medical care.

It follows that we ought to do everything practically possible to avert this outcome, even if it only amounts to buying time to prepare, and to learn from and to adapt to the experience of other countries, in terms of what has worked and what has not.

This is where the mutual inclusivity breaks down. The cost of intervening will be extraordinarily high.
Recession

When we called Australia going into recession, we explained that we did not want to model the outcome given the uncertainty and non-linearity involved. We still do not want to.

But by way of ballpark, and to provide a sense of how far away we are from the recently revised consensus, we are looking at Q2 GDP in the range of -20 per cent to -30 per cent on a quarter on quarter annualised basis, with risks skewed to the downside.

This assumes some pull forward in demand into end Q1 as stocking commences in earnest, followed by a sustained 25 per cent to 50 per cent reduction in various categories of personal spending, particularly, recreation and culture, and hotels, cafes and restaurants.

The upside risk of further fiscal stimulus is more than offset by the downside risks posed by passthrough to other sectors of the economy, including externally.

For context, Australia’s time series for GDP dates to 1959. In that period we have not seen a fall of more than 12 per cent on a quarter-on-quarter annualised basis. We note, as well, how disciplined the RBA was this past week in not commenting beyond March.

What is clear is that unless Canberra acts decisively on multiple fronts in the week ahead the risks will escalate even further.

How can we say this?

Firstly, Exante is independent. Even if others are on the same page, they likely cannot say so.

Second, we have a superior datastack on the virus, assembled and augmented each day by a global team since the last week of January. We have also been in collaboration with one of the top epidemiological research teams in the world, providing our open-source data to track China’s return to work.

We can see that Australia is accelerating now along paths that we have seen before. We are open to sharing our resources with the Department of Health, if they would reach out, as a public service.

Third, we assume the Morrison government will prioritize a public health intervention over the economy, and then deploy a full suite of technocratic efforts to mitigate the cost, on the hope that the crisis abates. We will discuss the modalities we see here next time.
China, South Korea

Our broader concern for Australia is that the intervention may not work. We only have two examples of effective containment globally so far, China and South Korea, each with unique societal characteristics, and both sharing important prior experiences with SARS and MERS.

For Australia, the journey to accept the degradation of ways of life we all take from granted will be more problematic, particularly given the path back to normality is not given.

It is unclear that Australians will accept that social distancing is a civic responsibility. It is unclear that we can respond with agility and solidarity and equanimity when the costs will be so high and so unevenly spread.

What is clear is that unless Canberra acts decisively and on multiple fronts in the week ahead the risks that we face will escalate even further.

Those risks include an entirely credible scenario where Australia moves into demographic decline for the first time since the Great War, as a combination of higher fatalities, lower births, and a precipitous fall in net immigration.

That scenario does not start with ‘R’ it starts with ‘D’.

The Morrison government has a mandate to act, and a duty as well.

Grant Wilson is head of Asia Pacific at Exante Data, a macro advisory and data analytics firm that provides research to institutional investors, central banks, corporations and private banks.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Under the Constitution, when Dail Eireann is dissolved outgoing Ministers continue to discharge the duties of their office until the Dail elects a Taoiseach and he makes appoints (or reappoints) Ministers. This remains the case regardless of whether the Ministers win or lose their seats in the election, or even stand in the election.

Doherty will act as Minister for Social Protection until someone else is appointed to the post.

sasta le wrote: »

Time to close our doors for now dont you think?