Daily Note, March 2, 2020

Headlines:

Democrat convention: Bloomberg predicts brokered convention; says "horse trading" will decide nominee, not voters. [March 4, 2020: becomes laughingstock in the political world after Super Tuesday; suspends campaign morning after Super Tuesday or as Senile Joe calls it, "Super Thursday."].

Gaffes: Biden's gaffes worsen; increase in numbers; mainstream media ignores. He's not sleepy; early signs of dementia, and pretty severe dementia.

Really hard ball: Chris Matthews "out" at MSNBC. Says he is out because he complimented women's attire in the past. [March 4, 2020: Chris Matthews already forgotten; nowhere to be found.]

Putin: lovin' it -- 

• knows coronavirus will work in his favor;
• will absorb Belarus
• will increase presence in Middle East

Coronavirus: Chris Hayes walked into it. On live television, Hayse asked an expert what the biggest problem was? The answer: not enough test kits. Reason: CDC rules and regulations did not allow anyone other than CDC to make corona virus test kits; turnaround time for CDC results? 72 hours. University of Nebraska has kit with six-hour turnaround time; President Trump has already gotten this problem solved. Chris Hayes did not pursue the question/answer. LOL. 

Hillary: will take talking tour to Federal judge -- on the judge's terms; to find out answers regarding her private e-mail server while SecState.

  
Updates

Later, 8:21 p.m. Central Time: wow, this is great news. The raw numbers today looked bad and the news out of Washington state were absolutely dreaded, but the percentages /statistics were incredibly good. By this time next week we will have more testing kits than ever. All agree that the "chokepoint" is the testing kit problem. Trump solved that problem. It's very possible we might be ahead of this crisis by the end of the month. The best way to stop this appears to be voluntary home quarantine and that depends on fast and accurate testing.

Later, 2:58 p.m. Central Time: here it comes. Total cases have jumped significantly from first reports this a.m.:

• US: up 24 deaths, now at 99; when it goes over 100, all hell will break loose in the US media; all deaths are in Washington State; all had underlying health conditions; sounds a lot like seasonal flu to me;
• Italy: 335 new cases; huge; 11 new deaths; President Trump needs to ban aircraft originating in Italy from coming to the US; the US needs to be fast and it needs to draconian; there's a very, very good chance the Pope will test positive for the virus;
• South Korea: 599 new cases; seven new deaths;
• Iran: like Italy, out of control; from 1,000 cases to 1,500 cases overnight; 

Original Post

Stock market: I have no idea what is going on in the market, though I did check to see how much cash I had available for new investments, and it was impossible to not see that the market was in the "green." How much, I do not know.  I stopped watching the market once "coronavirus" kicked in. So, my daily note will not include the market for the time being.

Coronavirus: the big picture --

• China: has stabilized with about 200 - 400 new cases each day; 50 new deaths each day;
• "Super-spreaders": either a country or an individual -- in both cases, the public health response has to be fast and draconian
• South Korea: an individual was the "super spreader"; to date, South Korea does not seem to be a "super spreader"; public health policies should be able to keep that from happening;
• Italy: most likely several "super spreaders" brought the virus to northern Italy; Italy was not fast and not draconian, and Italy has, in turn, become a "super spreader" for the EU; 
• Mideast:
• Iran: a "super-spreader" probably introduced the virus; the country is not yet a "super spreader"; highest levels of government infected; adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader dies; but others at that level also have disease; leaders of Iran in the age group mostly likely to be severely affected; Iranian ambassador to the Vatican apparently infected;
• Saudi Arabia: reported their first case, earlier today, March 2, 2020
• Jordan: reported their first case, earlier today, March 2, 2020
• Iraq: cases reported
• Lebanon: cases reported
• Turkey: supposedly no cases
• Syria: supposedly no cases
• Western world: Europe, US, Canada: it is interesting to note that almost all western world countries can trace their initial contacts to a few "super spreaders"; there are exceptions. 
• Case studies:
• Italy: huge jump overnight over the past couple of days, but as of 12:20 p.m. Central Time, Italy reports only 41 cases vs the 500 reported in one 24-hour period this past week; most remarkably, no new deaths reported in Italy, but we will see new deaths reported as those recently diagnosed cases linger; 
• Fatality rates:
• South Korea: 26/4,335 =  0.5% 
• Italy: 41 / 1,704 = 2.4%
• US: 2 / 88 = 2.3%
• Diamond Princess: 7/ 705 = 1%
• Takeaways:
• countries need to act fast and draconian: if the Italian data is correct, it is quite amazing; to go from 500 cases in one 24-hour periods to less than 50 just a day or so later; public health needs to determine how a country goes from 500 new cases in one day to 50 new cases in one day; there are probably at least four explanations, assuming the numbers are accurate
• the virus naturally burns itself out fairly quickly in a new community; the most susceptible are hit first; by which time, public health is able to respond;
• "super spreaders" -- some individuals may be "super spreaders"; we've seen that in other infectious diseases
• public health response based on very, very good communication, spread of information;
• some natural immunity
• Perplexing:
• countries from around the world have each reported at least 20 total cases, and yet the numbers in most of those countries are not increasing; scroll through the list today;
• the number of cases in the US is increasing, but not exponentially as one might have expected; perhaps the worse it yet to come;
• flights from China to the US were not suspended until about February 8, 2020; it is well known that Chinese were infected with coronavirus as early as mid-December; for almost two months huge opportunity for spread of virus; some now suspect that the virus has been on the US west coast for quite some time; where are cases?

Politics, Democrat primary

• Candidates:
• Dropping out: Steyer, Buttigieg
• Next to drop out: Klobuchar; "reality" speech in her home state tomorrow night; Warren quickly follows; her money will run out. [Later: at 1:00 p.m. Central Time, local radio is reporting that Klobuchar has dropped out. Note time the original post was posted and the 1:00 p.m. CT announcement.]
• big question: who got to all thesee of these folks -- they could have easily waited 48 more hours -- didn't have to do a thing -- just wait it out until Wednesday, but someone got to them -- and I bet it wasn't the Bernie folks -- just saying
• Leaves five three: Bernie, Biden, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, Pocahontas
• Most opportunistic: Steyer -- if any doubt, listen to his "I am dropping out" and track for yourself how his message changed over the past year; as an opportunist, Pocahontas not far behind; maybe worse than Steyer when all is said and done; after all, her MO has been there since applying to Harvard decades ago;
• Most enigmatic: Buttigieg; what was that all about? Some say it was to prove "he could" run to advance a certain personal movement. I don't think that was the reason;
• Super Tuesday: the pundits may be surprised -- by Wednesday morning, there may still not be a front runner; Biden, strong in the south; Bernie, strong in California, maybe Texas; Bloomberg, everywhere a presence but not a factor; if history were a guide, Bernie and Biden would team up on the same ticket; not going to happen this time around; 

From Power Line, link here:

It is odd that Sen. Amy Klobuchar would drop out today, not even 24 hours after her planned rally was disrupted by protesters. Maybe she got some terrible poll numbers showing she is going to lose her home state in tomorrow’s Super Tuesday primary? It would seem to have made more sense to see it through tomorrow, which is the normal inflection point to start clearing a field.

Coming on the heels of Buttigieg’s similarly sudden withdrawal yesterday (and news breaking right now that he, too, is endorsing Biden) makes me wonder if Presidents Obama and Clinton—and perhaps Hillary, too—are working the phone lines trying to clear a path for Biden now that he has finally won a primary.