How Will Covid-19/Coronavirus Affect my Alternative Investment Portfolio? Part 20: July 11th
Updated: Feb 8, 2021
U.S.'s anti-virus progress stalls, and flips troublingly into reverse; U.S. versus the world: which country is controlling the virus the best?; Sunbelt and West see unwelcome uptick in deaths; Doomed to forget history and repeat it? U.S. again facing crucial shortages of vital masks and medical equipment; Georgia reopening appears to be crumbling; Another week, another record number of jobs lost; Disney Reopens! "A Whole New World" for happy kids? Or sad science lesson on "The Circle of Life"?; Operation Warp Speed awards $450 million to promising Regeneron antibody cocktail treatment; "Scotty, Increase Speed to Warp Factor 2" -- Operation Warp Speed also awards $1.6 billion for experimental Novavax vaccine; Can the body fight the virus in two ways? And if so, will it complicate testing and treatment?; Remdesivir might help people survive Covid-19; Commercial Real Estate Transactions plummeted 35%; Commercial mortgage-backed delinquencies suddenly soared by record amounts in June; Senior housing occupancy nosedives to Great Recession levels and below; Multifamily operators hanging in there, but also warily eyeing potential upcoming cliff; Update on my portfolio.
(Usual disclaimer: I'm just an investor expressing my personal opinion and not a registered financial advisor, attorney or accountant. Consult your own financial professionals before making any financial decisions. Code of Ethics: I/we do not accept any money from any sponsor or platform for anything, including postings, reviews, referring investors, affiliate leads or advertising. Nor do we negotiate special terms for ourselves in the club above what we negotiate for the benefit of members.).
Quick Summary
Once again, a lot happened this week that affects investors. This week there was a lot of new information regarding the second virus wave, major investments by Operation Warp Speed, and also crucial data on how different real estate asset classes are holding up.
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.'s Virus Progress Stalls and Flips Troublingly into Reverse
For the 17th week in a row, the United States battled the coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease. By Saturday morning, the death toll had climbed to 136,716 (versus 132,112 last Saturday morning).
In the previous weeks, we've been monitoring the death doubling curve (how long it takes for deaths to double). We watched how this started off at doubling every three days at the beginning of the pandemic to slowing down to a more sustainable doubling every two months.
On the other hand, U.S. progress has stalled at that point for the last five weeks in a row, while many other countries have continued to improve (Canada, European Union, Australia, South Korea, Japan etc.). And if the United States experiences a second wave (see next section), this could matter, because it would give us less health and economic headroom to fight it. So this is an important statistic to continue to monitor. Unfortunately, Johns Hopkins University didn't update this data from last week. So we'll skip it this week and hopefully be able to look at it again, next week.
In the meantime here's the daily death rate:
There's a troubling-looking bump-up starting on June 26. However, as we talked about two weeks ago, this was not caused by an increase in actual deaths. Instead, it's because the CDC updated their statistical methodology on that date. They added more cases, which made it more accurate, but also prevents it from being compared to previous weeks (where the older methodology was being used).
Now that we've gone a full three weeks under the new scheme, it looks like all of the backlog from the change has been cleared out. And so presumably, it's fine to start looking again for emerging trends. What does it show?
Here's a close-up of the death curve, starting with the peak and going to yesterday. The part presumed to be post-backlog is highlighted in yellow:
This shows that the U.S. made no real progress in the last week and half in reducing the death curve. Worse yet, it appears that the country has gone backwards slightly with a small increase.
Looking back on the curve since the peak, there have been several other times where progress also went backwards very briefly before it resumed. So the current increase isn't guaranteed to mean a long-lasting change in trend. And if it ends up being just a temporary blip, that would be welcome news.
On the other hand, none of the older backtracking episodes were quite as large or sustained as the current one. And more importantly, none of the previous incidents were also accompanied by rapid growth of infections (and uptick in deaths) in multiple Sun Belt and Western states (which is happening now). So it could indeed be the first sign of a second wave of deaths.
If that ends up being the case, then significant health and economic challenges and potential dangers loom on the horizon. If deaths escalate and hospitals start to overload, then significant re-lockdowns would be required. This is already starting to happen in certain states as they reverse previous openings.
These kind of reversals could be crippling to many businesses. This is especially true of the small businesses that make up the bulk of the economy. These typically operate on thin profit margins, have small financial reserves, and are unlikely to be able to survive a backtracking very well.
Many economists expect that significant backtracking would reverse some or most of the economic progress made so far. This would be expected to cause extensive long-term damage (permanent for some businesses) and could greatly lengthen the time it takes for the entire economy to recover.
So we will continue to monitor this and see how it looks next week.
U.S. Versus The World: Which Country Is Controlling The Virus the Best?
Meanwhile, how is the U.S. doing versus other countries in controlling the disease?
It's would be unfair to compare countries on raw deaths, because large countries (like the U.S.) would be at a disadvantage. That's because we have more people than do the small countries (like South Korea). So looking only at raw deaths skews the comparison. Instead, we'll look at deaths per million because this puts all countries on a level playing field (regardless of size). How do all the countries stack up? Here's a look at the countries we've been following over the past weeks:
Despite the U.S. spending significantly more money on healthcare than does any other country in the world, and having the most vaunted healthcare system, its death rates continue to be stratospheric compared to many of the countries we've looked at. Taking a closer look:
U.S. deaths are 9.03 times worse than Canada, 34.85 times that of Germany, and more than 244 times worse that of Japan, South Korea and Australia. As discussed previously, all of these countries are using a more aggressive mixture of the Three T's of epidemic control (testing, tracing and treatment) than the U.S.
The one exception is Sweden, which is doing roughly as poorly as the U.S. That country has opted for a lockdown-lite strategy (see part 8). The hope, for many weeks, was that if this worked well, it could provide another workable model for other countries looking to deal with the virus.
Unfortunately, they have been plagued with an exceptionally high death rate (3 to 7 times their Scandinavian neighbors...see part 12). And like the U.S., they now find themselves subject to a travel ban by other countries.
Additionally, their economic experiment so far has failed to deliver, with the country 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 for adopting such an unconventional strategy.
In comparison, South Korea's economy is projected to barely shrink at all this year. So this week, the country continues to hold the title of being one of the best in the world for navigating the twin challenges of controlling the virus and protecting their economy.
At the same time, any comparison of countries also has to look at Taiwan as well. As we discussed in part 17, they moved extraordinarily quickly against the virus and have done even better than the amazing story in South Korea.
The reason we have not included Taiwan in the weekly analysis is that it's virtually impossible to get a steady flow of statistics on them. China wants to ultimately take over the Taiwanese democracy and "reunify" it with the rest of the country. So they have strong-armed virtually every country in the world (including the U.S.) into refusing to recognize Taiwan as a separate country. And so, health organizations, like the U.S. Centers For Disease Control (CDC), do not pass along the country's data. This is a huge shame, because the country obviously has important lessons to teach the rest of the world.
So how are they doing? Despite being hit fastest and hardest due to their location (right next to China), they are currently experiencing an unbelievably low death rate of 0.003 deaths per million. This is 813 times better than the United States:
And amazingly, their 2020 GDP is expected to actually grow by 1.52%. At this point, most of the world would look at that as an enviable result.
Sunbelt and West See Unwelcome Uptick in Deaths
For the last two weeks we talked about a second wave of virus infections that have been sweeping the South and West.
This week, the same dynamic expanded to virtually every major region of the country. On Saturday, nine states across the country reported record new single-day infections: South Carolina, Texas, Alaska, Arkansas, North Carolina, Idaho, Wisconsin, Oregon and Hawaii. Six of those states, along with 10 others, saw new seven-day average case highs.
Six states also saw seven-day averages for deaths hit a record high: Arizona, California, Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. And average daily deaths were at least 40 percent higher than last week in a third of U.S. states.
Many of the Sunbelt and the West states jumped into this wave sooner, and so are further along than others. For example, never since the beginning of the pandemic have multiple states reported more than 10,000 cases a day. But on Saturday, Texas and Florida helped the country re-attain this unwelcome record (Texas at 10,351 and Florida with 10,260). And on Sunday, Florida shattered the previous one day record for new infections at 15,300 (New York's highest was 11,571 on April 15).
Let's take a look at the three states we were monitoring last week and see how things are evolving. Here's Texas:
...Arizona..
and Florida look like:
I'm not going to comment individually on each one like previous weeks, because the story has become pretty much the same for all. All three states had bad weeks, setting record highs for virus infections.
As we talked about in part 18, some had hoped that increased infections would not show up as increasing deaths. That's because the average age of the infected is much younger than it was earlier on in the pandemic in New York City. Additionally, we have better medical treatment and are currently experiencing warmer summer weather (which some believe slows down the disease). And for the last several weeks, this seemed plausible. That's because death rates had plateaued in most states.
However, reports of Covid-19 deaths lag infections by anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks. So it can take quite a bit of time to get an accurate picture of what is actually happening at any time. And last week, we saw some disturbing news. Several states ominously broke out of their plateaus and showed signs of increasing deaths.
This week that trend continued and now all three of the above states are clearly in a second death wave (with higher deaths than they experienced at the peak of the first wave).
If deaths continue to increase, similar in speed to the rising rate of infections and hospitalizations over the past 2 to 8 weeks, it could be very bad news for the economic recovery. So we will continue to monitor this very closely next week.
In the meantime, more reports emerged this week that were eerie echoes of the early pandemic in New York and Italy.
The Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration announced on Tuesday that 52 intensive care units across one third of state counties had reached capacity and would be forced to tap surge capacity. Another 17 hospitals had run out of regular hospital beds. On the same day, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed the state has "abundant capacity"...
Testing sites across the state are seeing shortages and the wait time for results has grown as long as 10 days. Additionally, some parts of the state claim acute shortages of the antiviral drug remdesivir.
Meanwhile, the Texas Tribune published the news that multiple counties in Texas have reported that morgues are filling up rapidly to capacity. And Nueces County (which contains the city of Corpus Christi) is already full. Multiple counties have rented refrigerated trailers to stack dead bodies in anticipation of the upcoming overflow.
And the chief medical officer of San Antonio's Methodist Hospital posted a video warning young people in their 20's and 30's that they are not immune. A 30-year-old patient had attended a "Covid party" (see part 19) where people intentionally expose themselves to the disease in the hopes of winning a cash prize for being the first one to catch it. This patient caught the virus, was hospitalized and died. Before he died, he said to his nurse, "I think I made a mistake. I thought this was a hoax. But it's not."
Meanwhile, two additional states announced mandatory mask requirements this week: Louisiana and Mississippi.
Gov. Abbott in Texas, who reversed his earlier decision and made mask wearing mandatory has been facing a rebellion from some elements of his political party and members of the general public who will not comply.
He warned this week:
“I made clear that I made this tough decision for one reason: It was our last best effort to slow the spread of covid-19. If we do not slow the spread of covid-19… the next step would have to be a lockdown.”
Doomed to forget history and repeat it? U.S. again facing crucial shortages of vital masks and medical equipment
Meanwhile, numerous medical workers in the Sunbelt and West claimed they had inadequate amounts of masks and other vital equipment (Personal Protective Equipment or PPE) to effectively protect themselves and deal with the escalating crisis.
As an example, doctors at Memorial City Medical Center in Houston have been told to reuse disposable, single-use N95 masks for up to 15 days before they are thrown out.
And a survey of the largest organization of registered nurses in the country (National Nurses United, or NNU) was released this week with some eye-opening results.
85% of nurses across the country have been forced to reuse disposable N-95 masks. The NNU claims that "reusing single-use PPE is a dangerous practice that can increase exposure to nurses, other staff, and to patients."
28% of nurses have been required to reuse a decontaminated respirator with confirmed COVID-19 patients. The NNU claims that "decontamination of respirators has not been shown to be safe or effective, can degrade the respirator so it no longer offers protection, and some methods use chemicals that are toxic to breathe. Employers are increasingly implementing PPE decontamination to save money, endangering nurses’ lives in the process."
27% of nurses working with confirmed COVID-19 patients reported having been exposed without the appropriate PPE and also having worked within 14 days of exposure. This obviously puts both patients and healthcare workers at greater risk.
The American Medical Association reported that shortages of PPE are not limited to hospitals and are now starting to impede other critical areas of medicine. Neurologists, cardiologists and cancer specialists around the country have been unable to reopen, leaving patients without critical care.
Kay Kennel, the chief officer of Lubbock Kids Dental, which serves low-income families in Texas, says:
“We have kids living with grapefruit-sized abscesses for over three months who can’t eat or drink and there’s nothing we can do for them because we can’t get P.P.E."
The clinic claims it has a list of 50 children awaiting emergency surgery.
Meanwhile, supply chain experts say that the U.S. has squandered most of its time since the first phase of the pandemic, that could have been used to improve the situation. Currently, only a handful of American companies make PPE domestically and they say they're operating at maximum capacity.
So the PPE supply chain remains overwhelmingly dependent on overseas manufacturers and fly-by-night middlemen. As a result, it can be difficult to gauge quality and many of the prices have been jacked up by 7x or more.
Others are reporting that the problem is spreading even beyond the medical community, affecting others as well. Randy Bury is President of the Good Samaritan Society, which manages 200 nursing homes. He says they have struggled to protect residents by maintaining proper supplies of hand sanitizers, masks and gowns. "It’s been chaos for us. The supply chain in the United States is not healthy."
Georgia Reopening Appears to Be Crumbling
One of the most important questions for investments (as well as the health of the country) is "what will the shape and speed of the recovery be?" If it's V-shaped and quick, then many investments will be just fine. On the other hand, if it's one of the other shapes (U-shaped, swoosh, etc.), then some or many investments could run into problems. (See part 14 for more information on the possible "recovery shapes" and their ramifications).
To monitor the evolving situation, we've been watching Georgia very closely. It was one of the first states to reopen. So we expected this to make it a useful early indicator of what could be in store for some other parts of the nation.
Back on April 24, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp reopened nail salons, hairdressers, bowling alleys and gyms (as long as they followed state protocols). Then three days later, restaurants and theaters were allowed to reopen. So they've effectively been open for over two months.
How are they doing? Since there's no official government or state data on this, we've been looking at Placer.ai. This is a service which tracks mobile phone usage to different types of businesses to measure foot traffic.
Here are the statistics for the current footfall for Georgia's Covid-19-sensitive industries (versus the same week one year ago):
Apparel: -29.53% (vs -15.73% a week ago)
Dining: -24.17% (vs. -24.47% a week ago)
Fitness: -32.4% (vs. -39.53% a week ago)
Hotels / Casinos: -39.90% (vs. -34.18% a week ago)
Shopping Centers: -32.31% (vs. -22.91% a week ago).
All are at unhealthy, unprofitable-looking levels. And disappointingly, none have shown any substantial, v-shaped improvement from last week. Dining and fitness at least improved incrementally. Casinos have actually gotten a little worse. And apparel and shopping centers have taken dangerous nosedives (and appear to perhaps be experiencing a W-shaped recovery).
Since restaurants are not included in the above, let's also take a closer look at a couple of restaurants. Here is Denny's:
It's stuck at a brutal -53% year on year. Additionally, it's currently worse than it was a month ago when its initial progress first stalled out and reversed.
McDonald's does a lot of takeout, and theoretically should be much less sensitive to Covid-19. How does it look?
It's stuck at a very unprofitable-looking -26% year on year. And improvement appears to have plateaued.
How about Applebee's (which also has a takeout service)?
On one hand, about a month ago, they looked to be almost recovered at -10%. However in the last three weeks, they have backtracked and are now at a very painful-looking -25.5%.
Overall, the recovery for Georgia's Covid-19-sensitive industries continues to look poor. All seem to have either stalled out at unhealthy levels or are reversing course, which is extremely ominous. We will continue to monitor these next week.
The X-factor here is the possibility of Georgia halting or reversing re-openings due to a second wave. How's that looking this week?
On one hand, Georgia's deaths continue to remain mostly in a low plateau (although the end of the week brought a worrisome spike that could indicate the trend is about to change).
On the other hand, infections continue to climb, and for the third week in a row they continue to look like a carbon copy of the positions that Florida, Texas and Arizona were holding a couple of weeks prior. Also, Georgia suffered a brutal chart-busting spike of new infections at the end of the week, which blew away the previous record by leaping almost two times higher.
So we will continue to monitor how they're doing.
Another Week, Another Record Number of Jobs Lost
For the 15th week in a row, the jobless report showed that the country was hammered with more than a million new lost jobs. This week, it was 1.31 million, which was down slightly from the 1.4 million last week. Before the crisis, this amount of job loss would have been unthinkable and record-setting, but now it's becoming repetitive, old hat.
As we've talked about in the past: at this stage of the crisis, the "continuing claims" is an even more useful statistic to look at in this report. That's because jobless claims give us only half of the picture: how many jobs have been lost. The continuing claims number removes the people who have been rehired from this. And so, that tells us how many are unemployed right now.