www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/05/chinas-coronavirus-not-remotely-control-world-economy-mounting2/
China’s coronavirus is not remotely under control
As of this week two-thirds of the Chinese economy remains shut. More than 80pc of its manufacturing industry is closed, rising to 90pc for exporters.
The Chinese economy is 17pc of the world economy and deeply integrated into international supply chains. It was just 4.5pc of world GDP during the SARS epidemic 2003, which some like to use as a reassuring template. You cannot shut down China for long these days without shutting down the world.
And
Personally, I think the glacial SARS episode tells us little about the fast-spreading Wuhan virus. The 2019-nCoV variant is more akin to the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. It appears to be tracking the 1918 death rate at about 2.3pc (20 times normal winter flu) to the extent that we can believe any figures. There is some evidence that it is nearer 4.9pc in Wuhan
And
Far more have died than the official tally of 493. A Lancet study last week by the University of Hong Kong estimated that the Chinese authorities have understated the epidemic tenfold. This was based on a spread rate of 2.68 per case and a doubling in total numbers every 6.4 days, matched with known travel movements within China and globally since the outbreak.
It calculated even then that the true figure for Wuhan was likely to be 76,000, and that Chongqing, Changsha, Nanchang, are already riddled with the disease. “Independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable,” it said.
Views differ but it is striking how many global experts – when not under political pressure – say it may already be too late to stop the spread. “It’s very, very transmissible, and it almost certainly is going to be a pandemic,” says Anthony Fauci, head of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
It is the same warning from an “increasingly alarmed” Peter Piot, head of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The danger is that it will become endemic and circulate everywhere like flu, a manageable headwind for rich countries with good health care but a Sword of Damocles having over Africa or South Asia
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It basically says we are headed for potential shortages of products, a financial crash AND a pandemic the likes of which we've not seen since 1918 and possibly before.
It is not cheerful.
In terms of prepping, there is very little most of us can do in the face of that. If even one of those things comes to pass then we face profound changes in the next few years.
Joy.