Chinese Flu: Update -- October 3, 2020

Chinese flu: I'm sounding like a broken record again, but this is looking more and more like the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918:

• lasted two years;
• no vaccine;
• four waves;
  
• five years for stock market to recover; although once it did, it did so quickly
  

Chinese flu: headlines --

• NYC: 44% drop in apartment sales; 10,000 apartments said to be unoccupied and for sale; old news? Hardly, CNBC, October 2, 2020; I think the story came out before reports that Trump tested positive;
• families have settled into their new locations for this school year;
• earliest we will see change, next spring;
• in fact, could get worse, if universities start to shut down again after Christmas;
  
• six months after the pandemic started, Manhattan offices are only 10% full; link here; 
• the number of Covid-19-associated deaths in New York are starting to creep back up; it's subtle, very, very subtle, but it certainly raises concerns of a second wave; I've been impressed how few deaths NY has reported over the past few months, so this recent uptick caught my attention; always set the "filter" to "yesterday" at this link;
• the second wave might be associated with schools re-opening, particularly universities
  
• deaths/milllion
• North Dakota is moving up (bad); now at #32; had been around #40 for much of the past six months
• South Dakota, at #37, moving up (bad) very, very slightly
• Montana, once #49, only one state better, Alaska, is now #43, even worse than Oregon (#46) which was near the west coast epicenter (Washington state) when this all began
• Wyoming is #50; and Alaska, #51 (DC + 50 states)
• vaccines: recent setback; side-effects; serious side effects very, very rare, apparently, but enough side effects to scare folks, apparently quite high;
  

Chinese flu: bottom line -- not getting better, and we're just starting to get into the seasonal flu season. I can't imagine governors of states changing direction: those states that have started to re-open will not want to return to another lock down; those states that have not re-opened (such as California, New York, and New Jersey) are unlikely to relax lockdown mandates.