Market comment 2020

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The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the mortality rate from the Wuhan Coronavirus (formally known as 2019 nCoV) is 3.4% globally. The Spanish Flu of 1918 – which killed between tens of millions of people – had a lower mortality rate, estimated by the WHO as between 2 and 3%. But surely, you say, the Coronavirus is not as contagious as the Spanish Flu … Unfortunately, it’s more contagious.  The Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy notes:

The novel coronavirus has an R0 of 2.2, meaning each case patient could infect more than 2 other people. If accurate, this makes the 2019 nCoV more infectious than the 1918 influenza pandemic virus, which had an R0 of Based on calculations, the authors of the larger study estimate the novel coronavirus has an R0 of 2.2, meaning each case patient could infect more than 2 other people. If accurate, this makes the 2019 nCoV more infectious than the 1918 influenza pandemic virus, which had an R0 of 1.80 ….

WHO says that the R0 of Coronavirus in China was initially between 2 and 2.5.< But scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory said that the R0 for the Coronavirus is actually between 4.7 to 6.6 (although that number drops to between 2.3 and 3 after quarantines and social distancing are implemented). According to the Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and others, Coronavirus can be spread even when people have no symptoms. On the one hand, this is bad news, as it is very hard to screen and locate carriers when they are symptom-free or have only mild, cold or flu-like symptoms. On the other hand, this means that the real R0 might be much higher than WHO estimates … which would make the mortality rate lower.

 According to the WHO, Coronavirus Is WORSE Than the Spanish Flu ... Which Killed Tens of Millions of People | naked capitalism