The Daily Note -- Saturday, March 7, 2020

Updates Throughout The Day

6:49 p.m. Central Time: Italy plans large-scale lockdown in country's north to fight coronavirus. Quarantine, if approved, would ban movement into/out of northern provinces, including Milan, Venice, and Parma. Italy probably should have done this a week ago. A little late now. Infected most of the EU. Lombardy is Italy's major industrial region; would wreak havoc on Italy's fragile economy. I believe Italy may be the second largest economy, after Germany, in the EU. 

11:41 a.m. Central Time: my hunch -- sometime after the students return from spring break, all schools will be closed for two weeks. 

11:31 a.m. Central Time: OMG! Italy records more than 1,200 new cases. That's 12x more than China. A local north Texas high school did not cancel their student trip to Italy. Almost criminal if they bring coronavirus back to the DFW area. Italy remains out of control. Earlier, I posted that northern Italy where the cases are centered, has a disproportionate number of elderly. In Italy, deaths by age group (all deaths):

• Percentage of deaths by age group:
• 90+ years old: 6% of deaths
• 80 - 89 years old: 42% of deaths
• 70 - 79 years old: 35% of deaths
• 60 - 69 years old: 16% of deaths

 

Original Post

I forgot to post the usual "active rigs" data yesterday. A Freudian slip, no doubt. Or maybe I've caught "Joe Biden" disease. It's a not-uncommon malady among the elderly.

#MeToo-Senile.

Whatever.

So, here it is.

$41.28	3/7/2020	03/07/2019	03/07/2018	03/07/2017	03/07/2016
Active Rigs	55	65	60	44	35

I've been waiting to post that the number of rigs is at a 5-year high but I might have to wait a bit longer.

I'm not watching the market, haven't read the WSJ in weeks, so what I know about non-corona-virus stuff and non-Bakken stuff is about nil. In fact, I was completely unaware of the 10% drop in WTI until I finally got bored and had to read the on-line edition of the WSJ.

Wow, a lot has happened in the past few weeks.

LOL.

******************************

Cable News

From a source:

Fox News’ town hall with President Trump on Thursday was the most-watched election town hall in cable news history, according to early Nielsen media research.
 
.... averaged 4.2 million viewers ... The record-setting town hall dominated cable news, topping MSNBC’s 1.4 million viewers and CNN’s 1 million viewers combined.
 
Fox News also beat CNN and MSNBC combined in the key news demographic of adults age 25-54, averaging 744,000 during the town hall.

I assume Chris "Hardball" Matthews was watching from an undisclosed location in voluntary quarantine.

***********************************

Politics

Just to be clear: the chance of a brokered convention -- 5%. The chance that Biden wins the nomination on the first vote: 75%. The chance that the DNC convention goes into a third round of voting: 0%. To be clear: Biden has the nomination sewn up -- either on the first ballot or the second ballot when the super-delegates choose the nominee.

California won't have final results / final delegate distribution until at least April 10, 2020. We may know Iowa's final numbers before we know California's final numbers.

Super-duper Tuesday this next week includes North Dakota, I believe. Let's check. Yup. 14 delegates. Michigan and Washington state back in play now that Pocahontas has dropped out.

So, who does Biden select as his running mate?

Hillary: re-calculating, re-calculating, re-calculating.

I was most disappointed that the Schumer story has no legs. The mainstream media is avoiding this one like the plague. But it's out there. Lurking.

Even more disappointing: I haven't seen any follow-up regarding Brian William's math. No wonder MSNBC has experts to watch voting patterns. Brian would have no clue. Go over to YouTube .... search ... Brian .... LOL .... first thing that pops up: Brian Williams math. This is what I was looking for: The Life of Brian.

****************************

Coronavirus

I went to bed early last night so I also failed to report the daily coronavirus update. The numbers, of course, are inaccurate but it's the best we have. Taking them at face value, China is down to less than 100 new cases. That is absolutely phenomenal. In fact, this belies (is that a word; am I using it correctly) the insanity of all this.

The numbers are so skewed now from country to country that it's hard to make sense of the percentage changes on a daily basis. It's a global issue composed of a dozen regional stories. Data for today, March 7, 2020:

• China: down to 99 new cases; 28 new deaths; that number won't change today. China reports once every day, early in the day (central standard time)
• South Korea: still running about 450 new cases days; 448 today; 48 / 7,041 = 0.7% fatality rate;
• EU: overall, pretty bad; and vast majority of cases can be traced back to Italy
• France: looks to be another hot spot -- 220 new cases in France yesterday; it would be interesting to know geographical area impacted in France. Southeastern France extends in ground zero in Italy. That's all the same region for all practical purposes.
• Iran: out of control; another 1,076 cases; 21 new deaths
• Italy: pending, could see as many as 1,000 new cases; there were 778 new cases reported yesterday; astounding; 197 / 4,636 = 4.3% fatality rate; something a reader pointed out to me -- note the demographics of northern Italy -- an elderly population for the most part; and so it goes

Think about -- China with a billion people, with ground zero in their own country, and is now reporting less than a hundred new cases, while South Korea with a fraction of China's population is now reporting five times as many new cases each day. 

I"m fascinated by that. I've mentioned before that I'm fascinated by the public health angle with regard to coronavirus. Case studies:

• Diamond Princess: closed, captive population of mostly elderly folks from all over the world;
• China: closed society; ground zero;
• South Korea: open society; most modern country in the world (arguable but certainly among the top ten);
• Italy: is this a regional story -- northern Italy?

But now we have the best case study in front of  us: the EU --

• if one word defines the EU for me, it's the word "bureaucracy"  
• it will be hard to find EU statistics (there's a reason for that, I assume), so we might have to pick a couple of representative countries. Let's pick France and Germany. The UK will have its own unique issues.
• France: 9 deaths (near Italy, one wonders); no new cases today; 653 total cases; 1.4%; a whole lot better than the US; 17 / 335 = 5%
• Germany: no deaths; 717 total cases; 47 new cases today; with no deaths, a fatality rate of .... drum roll ... zero;

One last note: I was surprised, very, very surprised to see the growth factor decline yesterday. I don't expect that to continue once the US starts mass testing, and the EU and UK start reporting ever higher numbers.

*********************************

US Seasonal Flu

Source: CDC

Week 9, ending February 29, 2020 -- unlike Coronavirus in which we get data in real-time, data for seasonal flu lags at least a week and the numbers are much more vague.

Data points:

• US population: 330 million
• seasonal flu case so far this season: 34 million (at least)
• deaths so far this season (began October, 2019): 20,000
• children: record number of deaths this seasonal flu season with 136 deaths, up from 125 previous week
• cumulative hospitalizations: 57.9/100,000 = 200,000 hospitalizations
• percentage of US deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza: 6.9%, below the epidemic threshold of 7.3%
• 11 influenza-associated pediatric deaths were reported this week, brining this season's ttal to 136 
• seasonal flu vaccine is less than 45% effective

****************************************
Turkey

A war and a new refugee crisis. Link here. 

****************************************

The Market

Maybe more on this later. I can't say a thing because I haven't followed the market at all the past two weeks. The only thing I'm doing consistently is checking my cash on a daily basis (dividends) and buying more shares in non-energy companies.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, career, travel, job, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

**************************

Paranoia

This a.m. I was talking to another individual who loved Amazon. I mentioned that I love Echo/Alexa. He said he did, too, until his wife threw it out in the garbage when when she heard that Amazon/Echo/Alexa was listening into your conversations.

I mentioned that one could turn off that function by tapping the "red button." He said he knew that now, but not then. Hasn't changed a thing. No Echo/Alexa in that household. LOL.

The presidential candidate who can best tap into the paranoia will win the race.