2020.03.09

Official Numbers:

• 113,603 confirmed infected
• 4,012 confirmed deaths
• 62,517 confirmed recovieries
• 80,752 Mainland China
• 9,172 Italy
• 7,478 South Korea
• 7,161 Iran
• 1,209 France
• 1,176 Germany
• 1,073 Spain
• 696 Others
• 605 US
• 511 Japan
• 374 Switzerland
• 321 Netherlands
• 321 UK
• 248 Sweden
• 239 Belgium
• 205 Norway
• 150 Singapore
• 131 Austria
• 117 Malaysia
• 115 Hong Kong

Site/Links

• Someone emailed in to tell me that the before and after photos of the Port of Seattle are fake news. Real photos, but not from the current situation. Consider this a retraction of that update

Middle East:

• Deep dive into what the real numbers in Iran probably are. It is worth keeping in mind that there is no reason in principle why other nations wouldn’t be keeping just as many cases under wraps. Things start looking a lot different if you hypothesize that China has had a million infections by now

Europe:

• Man in Italy under quarantine has sister die in his house. Italian authorities will not test him, and will not remove the body (??). Things like this are what we need to prepare for for when this hits in force
• President of Portugal in self-isolation
• Italy places entire nation under lockdown

US:

• New York State taking care of the important problems: NY State using prison labour to manufacture hand sanitizer to compensate for market shortage
• VEGETA? WHAT DOES THE SCOUTER SAY ABOUT HIS INFECTION LEVEL? WHAT?!?!? IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND?!?!?
• City of Austin institutes ban on all public events >2500 people. Possibly related to Dell Employee who flew from Austin to India and then got diagnosed
• Commentary: Today, Italy locked down everything. The US is 10-15 days behind Italy in terms of infection numbers. Expect wide scale lockdowns before April

Markets:

• Oil consumption declined in absolute terms for the first time in more than a decade
• The market is really, really, really bad today.