CORONA VIRUS DAILY UPDATE

It's not looking good, folks. The numbers are bad, but the hysteria and government posturing is off the charts. 

Italy is getting set to overtake China -- now 2,503 deaths to China's 3,226. 

Meanwhile governments all over the world are shutting down most of their economies, closing their borders, and placing cities under lock down.

As more testing gets done, the USA is shooting up the table. How high can it go? My guess is it will eventually overtake China unless they take the same extreme measures the Chinese took, and that's a non-starter with pampered Americans.

There are two things that will stop the virus -- a vaccine or populations building up natural "herd" immunity. The first will reportedly take 18 months, the second involves large numbers of people getting the virus. 

So, basically your choices are mass coronavirus with a long-term shut-down of the economy (blunting the wave) or mass coronavirus with a short-term disruption of the economy (allowing hospitals to be overwhelmed for a comparatively short period). 

Personally I think taking it on the chin in a short, nasty burst, with minimal disruption to the wider economy, is probably the optimum strategy, as I don't think most societies in the World can take the prolonged strain of up to a year of economic shut-down. 

Another factor is whether the virus is curtailed by rising temperatures. I'm not seeing that yet. Italy is seeing warm spring weather (18 degrees Celsius today) but there was a higher than 10% increase in total cases. 

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