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Economic implications of a SARS/Coronavirus outbreak

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From AFR. A reminder that this totally uncharted territory.
We will need some radical new solutions.

There is no investor playbook for this crisis
COVID-19 is a pandemic without precedent in the modern era. The sooner the finance industry learns to shed its reliance on templates and accept that, the better.

Robin Wigglesworth
Apr 2, 2020 – 9.46am
Wall Street loves a good playbook. Perhaps it is the prevalence of former jocks on trading floors, but whenever markets become turbulent they look at what worked in similar crises and dust off the same strategies. But the coronavirus crisis is confounding because it looks at once like a mosaic of many previous crises — and also completely new.
https://www.afr.com/markets/equity-...stor-playbook-for-this-crisis-20200402-p54gae
 
This story was on News Ltd on March 20th (practically 6 months ago in todays news world.)
Certainly highlighted the need to protect industries and businesses over teh next six months.
Wayne Swans interview reinforced that message.

Coronavirus: Billionaire warns shutdown of world’s economy is coming
An Australian chairman has warned of a “near total shutdown” of the world’s economy within months as the coronavirus crisis deepens.
 
In reality, we are probably just getting our toilet paper back, in a different form.
 
This shows the problem Australia has with its large manufacturers offshoring.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/com...sks-by-chinese-companies-20200403-p54gox.html

Boosting capacity
In recent times Ansell has been affected by restrictions imposed in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, which had handicapped the movement of packaging materials needed to house Ansell's products.

Ansell has invested significantly to increase capacity at its operations in China, Malaysia and elsewhere in response to the demand spike. Mr Nicolin said Ansell's China plant was "running at 30 per cent above the capacity we had before the crisis".


Ansell also makes a range of goods used in the industrial sector, including in automotive and mining. The company's industrial division is seeing reduced demand because of the wide-ranging economic slowdown.

"On the other side we have hospitals and laboratories and so forth where demand is through the roof," Mr Nicolin said.
 
moXJO said:
We seem to be getting on top of the situation.
Click to expand...
We talk australia as many others are nowhere near on top of the situation...
So what is next?
I linked an article in the thread Post Corona
There is no right answer, just bad or worse...
 
Rio Tinto has relocated 700 workers from the eastern states and overseas to Western Australia as it tried to keep its iron ore workforce intact in the face of Premier Mark McGowan’s lockdown of the state.

It is understood the resources giant has also made a one-off $3,000 payment to some workers affected by sweeping roster changes that will see its workforce forced to remain on site for at least 14 days at a time to conform to WA’s coronavirus prevention regime.

Rio joined rival BHP in asking fly-in fly-out workers it had previously flown from eastern states to temporarily relocate to WA for the duration of the crisis, confirming on Monday that about 700 workers had agreed to the move.

The workers will be paid a daily allowance to find their own accommodation, and will be required to conform to the state’s quarantine requirements.
 
While it's normal in the early days of ramping up a mine to get the necessary expertise from anywhere and everywhere, as time goes by most jobs can be filled by training local workers.
Last year I sat next to a former coal miner from Queensland's Bowen Basin who had been FIFOing to the Pilbara for a few years.
What I would have given to get his frequent flyer points!
 

Times have certainly changed, in the 1980's the guys working in remote areas generation projects, worked a five weeks on one week off roster.
 
sptrawler said:
Times have certainly changed, in the 1980's the guys working in remote areas generation projects, worked a five weeks on one week off roster.
Click to expand...
indeed. My '70s oil rig experience was 2 weeks on / one off.... 12 hr shifts, then crew change took a day each way by DC3 & supply boat (in my time). Young person's game. When we went 2 and 2, yahoo; then 1 and 1, with helicopter, knock off at 6 am and be on shore by 8am..

Then in 80's, in geophysics, 3 weeks on, 10 days off in Bowen Basin, FIFO from BNE
 
Note that staying at least 14 days does not mean they stay 14 days, could be 6 weeks for all we know
The way i read it is if i had to go on site from bne to the Pilbara for an installation taking 3 days, it will take me nearly 3 weeks with transport...
 
qldfrog said:
Note that staying at least 14 days does not mean they stay 14 days, could be 6 weeks for all we know
Click to expand...
An important point worth highlighting in all of this.

"At least x days" does not mean it ends after that time. It means it does not end before that time and that's a very different thing, in some cases different by orders of magnitude.

There's also the point that with the lack of any relevant precedent, all numbers are at this stage either a measure of what has already occurred or is simply an educated guess regarding the future. It's not as though we're following a script or some directly comparable historical event - the Spanish flu was too long ago, in a world too different, to expect the same economic impacts.
 
Thinking about the broader economic impacts, state governments are one that comes to mind.

*Stamp duty is a major revenue source and this will almost certainly decline.

*Payroll tax is another one and that will also decline.

*GST is another major revenue source and as consumers spend less, especially non non-exempt goods and services, will decline.

*To the extent the states own businesses operating on a commercial basis some of those are largely immune or even benefit but some are exposed. Anything involving passenger transport would be an obvious example of one that will see lower revenue for the states where that's in public ownership.

*Likely increased cost of various concessions as the economy deteriorates.

*Additional direct costs in the health system not fully met by the federal government.

*Possible additional costs relating to law enforcement.

*Cost of any state-based economic stimulus plans of any sort.

All up it would seem to be the perfect storm really so far as state governments are concerned. They're going to be paying this back for a very long time (noting that the states don't have the money printing option).
 
Stimulus so far seems to have been targeting food on the table and a roof on over our heads.

Have any govs started talking about actual stimulus to create new jobs, new projects, new money in to the system, not just replacing what was lost?
 
Now this is a huge worry. I would have thought this would be the case in many nations but surprised it is the case in the USA.
An estimated additional 180 - 195 deaths per day occurring at home in New York City due to COVID-19 are not being counted in the official figures. "Early on in this crisis we were able to swab people who died at home, and thus got a coronavirus reading. But those days are long gone. We simply don't have the testing capacity for the large numbers dying at home. Now only those few who had a test confirmation *before* dying are marked as victims of coronavirus on their death certificate. This almost certainly means we are undercounting the total number of victims of this pandemic," said Mark Levine, Chair of New York City Council health committee [source]
https://virusncov.com/ 6 April
 

Not surprising at all. The official deaths were always going to be the ones counted in hospitals. There will be scores if not hundreds of deaths in nursing homes that won't be counted yet. They may well be later on and someone needs to note the source those upturns in reported deaths to let people no these are "old deaths" not new ones.

Similarly deaths at home won't be recorded yet and in a number of cases may not be identified as being caused by the virus.
In the US (and elsewhere) this will be particularly significant when there is spread of the infection in areas currently still not closed down.

Across the world the true impact of Covid 19 is under reported. This will be particularly the case in rural and remote areas as well urban slums.

A study by disease modelers at the University of Texas at Austin states that "Given the low testing rates throughout the country, we assume that 1 in 10 cases are tested and reported. If a county has detected only 1 case of COVID-19, there is a 51%
chance that there is already a growing outbreak underway" [source]
[source]
https://virusncov.com/
 
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