How will Covid-19/Coronavirus Affect my Alternative Investment Portfolio? Part 18: June 27th
Updated: Feb 8, 2021
U.S. stuck in uncomfortable plateau for 3rd week; European Union likely to ban U.S tourists starting July 1; Watching hospitalizations: The kids are not so all-right; State death rates: Last sign of hope for smooth sailing, or calm before the deluge?; Georgia's reopening: The haves and have-nots; Is reduced restaurant spending this week the canary in the coal mine?; Comatose jobs recovery flatlines at dangerous level; Study finds most middle-class Americans would get squeezed in a slow recovery; The upcoming state-budget train wreck?; Record number of U.S. companies ask for relief on their loans; Did the coronavirus really start in Wuhan in December? Spanish sewer study suggests it didn't; Update on my investment strategy
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Quick Summary
A lot happened this week that affects investors. And the major news again tilted toward Second-Wave-related virus data, and the economic repercussions of the crisis.
By the way, this is one article in a multi-part series that has been published weekly since the pandemic began back in March 2020. The series started with three introductory articles on the virus, effect on the economy and alternative investment classes. And then it moved on to weekly updates on the latest and greatest developments (along with weekly updates on my evolving personal portfolio strategy). You can see the links to every article in the series here.
U.S. Appears Stuck In Uncomfortable Plateau for 3rd Week
For the 15th week in a row, the U.S. continued to battle the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease. And by Saturday morning, the death toll had climbed to 127,649 (versus 121,451 last week).
An additional 6,198 people were killed, versus only about 4,300 the previous week. At first glance, this looks alarming since the number of dying people had gone down every week for the past two months. Taken at face value, it might mean that the country is starting to backtrack. And initially, the daily death statistics seem to back this up:
However, the European CDC notated that on June 26, some states added "probable deaths" to their statistics. Per the Connecticut CDC, this means: "Probable cases of COVID-19 involve persons who have not had confirmatory laboratory testing (RT-PCR) performed for COVID-19, but whose symptoms indicate they are likely to have a COVID-19 infection. In Connecticut, most of the probable COVID-19 cases involve persons whose death certificates list COVID-19 disease or SARS-CoV-2 as a cause of death or a significant contributor."
This is in line with the recommendations of many health experts, who point out that test supply has been too insufficient/untimely to meet demand; that many times, hospitals use a lung x-ray to diagnose rather than waste a test or have to wait for results; and that some people opt to stay home and self-treat rather than get tested or venture into the hospital. So this death-certificate method makes the statistics more reliable.
But, it also makes it hard to compare the data from last week. So let's take a look at the more noisy (un-smoothed) daily data.
It's notoriously difficult to accurately eyeball weekly data from a daily chart. But this week looks roughly to me like it was almost the same as last. So I'm going to call it "essentially plateauing" and, if accurate, that would be the third week in a row.
Meanwhile, in what may be confirmation of this, the national death doubling rate (the time it takes for deaths to double) remained unchanged this week at a two month (eight week) period:
This plateau is significantly higher than many European and Asian countries (with U.K. and Japan at 3 months, Germany at 5, Italy at 8, France at 11 and South Korea at 11+ months). And some epidemiologists have pointed out that this puts the U.S. in a much more uncomfortable position, if we have to endure a second wave. A serious second wave could cause significant re-lockdowns, wiping out some or all the economic progress we've made so far, and would be crippling to the recovery. Meanwhile, other countries have a lot more headroom in which to work. As an example, here's the difference in current virus infections between the E.U. and the U.S.:
Note: this comparison unfairly penalizes the E.U., because they've tested a larger percentage of their population and they also have more people (445 million versus 328 million). But despite this, they've clearly trounced the U.S., and are in a much stronger position. Additionally, the U.S. infections look worse than last week and clearly show signs of a worrying second wave (see next section). In the meantime, how did other countries do this week?
South Korea continued to lead most of the world again for both minimizing deaths (one of the lowest per million) and also minimizing economic damage (growth is projected to barely shrink this year, and without needing to borrow trillions of dollars for stimulus). This week, their death rate's decrease actually broke through the (already very low) plateau that it was in last week:
As we discussed in part six, South Korea uses an aggressive mixture of the Three T's of epidemic control (testing, tracing and treatment).
Japan has gone with a similar strategy (although much lighter on testing and more low-tech on contact tracing). And previously, they had significant success. But last week, it appeared they might be encountering a second wave. The country then started aggressively cracking down, and rolled out a high-tech contact tracing app.
This week, the data brought better news: it appears that their second wave quickly crested and is retreating again:
Meanwhile, Sweden has opted with a lockdown-lite strategy (see part 8). The hope has been that if this works well, it might provide another workable model for other countries looking to deal with the virus.
However, Sweden has been plagued with exceptionally uneven performance and multiple periods of backtracking and waves of infection. But for the last two weeks, it has looked like they might have turned the corner and had beaten down the last wave.
This week was an exceptionally noisy one (even for them). On one hand, the overall long-term trend still appears to be continuing down. On the other hand, the extreme volatility makes it easy to argue that Sweden's trends are unreliable and they may very well be about to reverse.
So we'll see how their situation evolves next week.
Unfortunately, Sweden's death rate continues to be three to seven times higher than their Scandinavian neighbors (see part 12). And lockdown-lite continues to appear to have failed its main economic objective. The country is still expected to plunge into a severe recession (their GDP is projected to be -5.6% in 2020, versus -5.9% for the U.S.). This is a bit better than the average -8.1% projected for the Euro Zone, but is not the large benefit many hoped to see.
European Union Will Probably Ban U.S. Tourists on July 1.
The European Union's hospitality industry depends heavily on tourists. However, in the early stages of the virus crisis, their block of countries was hammered really hard. So, in mid-March, they banned all leisure travel from other countries.
Since then, the E.U. has had considerable success in breaking the infection curve of the virus and getting it under control. And this week, diplomats discussed how they would lift this travel ban. On July 1, they plan to accept tourists again from all countries who have done at least an equally good job of controlling the virus themselves.
However, the U.S. was not one of the 15 countries that made the provisional list on Friday. And sources have told Bloomberg that the U.S. is not under consideration to be added. (The final decision is expected to be made over the weekend or early next week).
If U.S. tourists are indeed excluded, it will continue to be crippling for both the E.U. and the U.S. economies. As mentioned above, E.U. tourism industry depends heavily on travel, and a lot of that is U.S. travel. And the European tourist market is crucial for the profitability of both U.S. and European airlines. For example, carriers like Delta profit from almost 40% more premium seat business on North Atlantic flights than on those to anywhere else in the world.
Health experts said they were not surprised by the news, because the U.S. has significantly lagged the E.U. in successfully controlling the virus (see previous section).
And as we've discussed in detail over the weeks, the countries in the E.U. have each used different strategies to fight the virus. Some of these mirror what we have done in the U.S., and others differ. So this has caused some to question if there are any common factors across the E.U. that would explain their relative success vs. the U.S.'s. And a study released by Bloomberg this week examined this question in detail.
The study used data from Oxford University and the Kaiser Family Foundation to compare European states with several U.S. states that are currently experiencing an upswing in virus cases and/or hospitalizations (Arizona, Florida, California and Texas).
After crunching the data, the economists did indeed find two consistent and interesting differences:
The European countries were more patient during lock-downs and took the time to get their epidemic under much tighter control before they reopened. The U.S. on the other hand was less patient and reopened much sooner. For example, hard-hit Spain waited until infections had dipped down to 23.2 infections per million before it opened up. Arizona reopened while it was still at 52.4 infections per million.
Once they did reopen, the European countries were much better at keeping their reinfections down. For example, a month after reopening, all of the European countries had drastically improved their situations (for example, Spain dropped to 8.4 infections per million). Not only did the U.S. not do this, but progress actually went into reverse and all the states regressed. (For example, Arizona regressed to a mind-blowing 177.2 infections per million). And the differences only accelerated over time. The most recent data for Spain showed that their infections have continued to drop to 7.3 infections per million. Meanwhile, Arizona infections were practically bursting off the top of the chart at 374.5 infections per million. This is probably due to the E.U.'s much more aggressive use of the Three T's of epidemic control (testing, tracing and treatment).
So which countries did make the E.U.'s list? Currently there are 15. Included are South Korea and Japan. We've been watching them over multiple weeks and seen their success, so this is not a surprise.
The list also includes two countries that we have not looked at before: Canada and Australia. So let's take a peek at them, now.
Here is the daily death rate in Canada:
Clearly, Canada has been successful in stopping the exponential growth of the virus and controlling it.
How about Australia? Similar to South Korea, they have gone with a strategy of aggressive use of the 3T's of pandemic control (testing, tracing and treatment). They have also similarly scaled up testing and implemented a nationwide contact tracing app.
How has this translated in so far as deaths? For whatever reason, Australian daily death data is not reported by the European CDC. However, I was able to find a wealth of information directly from the Australian government's Department of Health. That included this detailed infographic, which they update daily and which contains demographic information that is difficult to find in other countries:
As you can see, Australia has had much more remarkable success than even Canada. First, the graph of their new cases shows dramatic progress in beating down the virus.
And second, even more impressively, they have had only 104 deaths over the entire span of the pandemic in a population of 24.99 million. That is about 4.1 deaths per million. In comparison, the United States has suffered 377.76 deaths per million (or almost 94 times worse).
As you can see from the above graph, Australia's tiny number of deaths per million puts it in the upper echelons of world performance, and their death rates are similar to Japan and South Korea. These three countries are faring so much better than the U.S., to such a similar degree, that they almost look indistinguishable from each other on the chart (when it is formatted to include all the countries).
Canada is more similar to the U.S., but is still doing about one third better.
Second Wave of Virus Infections Accelerates Alarmingly
Last week, we saw troubling signs of a second wave of virus infections reported in multiple states. At the time, some had hoped they could be explained away as statistical aberrations caused by increases in testing. But unfortunately, when we dug into the numbers, infections were clearly rising faster than testing. So, the "increased testing" theory did not invalidate the spikes that were happening.
This week, the same trend not only continued but, in many states, it accelerated at an alarming rate.
Here are Arizona, Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Missouri, which are all significantly higher than their most recent troughs from a couple months ago. Arizona:
Florida:
Texas:
South Carolina:
Missouri:
And here is North Carolina. Since it never really experienced a trough, it is arguably still in a very slow-emerging first wave:
Many health experts believe the rapid speed of the increases is an indication that the virus is again spreading exponentially in many communities.
Watching Hospitalizations: The Kids Are Not So All-Right
Some have hoped that these spikes in infections might not translate into increased hospitalizations. That's because multiple states have reported that many of the people infected currently are younger than those hit by the initial wave. For example, 44% of those testing positive in California are below the age of 35 (versus 29% a month ago). And many believe that young people are mostly immune to the disease and/or can't be seriously affected.
Unfortunately, as we discussed back in part 4, a growing body of evidence shows that the concept of youth invulnerability is inaccurate. The U.S. CDC found that 20.8% of the U.S.'s 20- to 44-year-old's with Covid actually get the disease so severely that they require hospitalization. And thousands of younger people (many very healthy and with no previous health conditions) are reporting debilitating long-term side effects from the virus, months after they were first infected. (See "Long Haulers" in Part 16).
Last week, we saw how Covid-19 hospitalizations were increasing in a couple of key states. This week, the issue appeared to escalate, with the U.S. CDC reporting increasing hospitalization rates in multiple regions across the country: Southeast, South Central, Southwest and Coastal.
The CDC also warned ominously that the actual rate of people severely affected is almost certainly higher than what hospitalization rates are showing. This is because hospitals are now using telemedicine more than they did in the first wave. And they have also recommended that patients not visit the emergency room unless it is a severe emergency. So this will artificially depress the statistics in comparison to the first wave.
And this week, more local officials raised warnings about increasing Covid 19 hospitalizations and potential hospital overload.
On Monday, officials in Houston, Texas, said virus hospitalizations were up and the city's intensive care units (ICU's) were becoming dangerously stretched.
Then, on Wednesday, administrators at Houston's Texas Medical Center reported that 97% of ICU beds were occupied. They projected they would hit 100% later in the week.
Even more ominously, they projected that overflow capacity would be maxed out at current growth rates as soon as July 8.
This caused local officials to scramble. They say they are preparing to convert a local stadium into a temporary hospital, should more overflow be needed. If this happened, it would be reminiscent of the pop-up hospitals that were required in New York City during the height of its epidemic in April (see part 6).
Many health officials urged the public to take virus precautions (like wearing masks, socially distancing and staying home as much as possible) to avoid this. And at the state level, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott reversed his earlier decision to continue reopening and agreed to pull it to a halt. He re-banned elective surgeries, closed all Texas bars (other than for takeout) and reduced restaurant capacity to 50%.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs also raised an alarm about increased hospitalizations.
"It's not just the cases. We have seen the highest number of hospitalized patients. I'm terrified we will overwhelm the health care system, the hospitals, the ICUs. Not in the fall, I'm talking about this week"