Tom Kirkman

Don't sneeze. Coronavirus is a threat to oil markets and global economies

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Just before Chinese New Year on the 25th, it looks like the Coronavirus emanating from China is going to cause multi-form, intertwined havoc, globally. 

Health, markets, energy demand, travel plans, economy, all going to get whacked.  Starting in China already.  How hard the whacks will be remain to be seen, but whacks are already being dished out.

Lets see how far the health problems spread globally by next week, along with a resultant knockdown on all sorts of other economic and energy factors.

Coronavirus is a threat to oil markets

Oil demand causes market moves and China's oil demand tops that of the U.S.

Oil prices are set to fall for the week mainly due to concerns over the coronavirus.

The deadly virus is keeping oil prices low on concerns demand will fall, with a big impact on travel as people stay put.  ...

... The oil markets are obsessed with China -specifically China’s demand for oil, according to Oilprice.com.  ...

 

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(edited)

This is such utter bullshit.  So we aren't going to have a few flghts in and out of Wuhan a pimple on the butt of the world and it's going to cause a dent in worldwide demand?  What kind of idiots write this tripe?  I think if you look at the SARS epidemic which was similar, it ran its course in about four months around the same time of year.  Did it destroy the economy?  Did we drastically reduce oil consumption as a result?  NO and NO..........

The world population continued to grow, China continued to consume more and more oil and today they are the worlds largest importer, that's not going to change because of a strong strain of flue.  It's just another mouthpiece propaganda article to keep the price of WTI below $60 as emperor Trump desires.

I just read another article saying that China is trying to build new hospitals in short order to take the coronavirus patients, so that's not a new source of demand for oil?  The activity involved in quarantining and transporting supplies to save people is not using oil?  These articles are written without any real consideration for facts that dont' support the argument.

Edited by wrs
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Potentially great for pharmaceutical companies.  The right ones. Such as INO (disclaimer: I currently have a position in INO).  

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Avian virus hit in march 2013.  Interesting.  Hopefully we can get a repeat.

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The key to SARS, MERS, and the new coronavirus isn't that they're "flu's" but their death rate. Humans are quite accustomed to "regular" influenza so the death rate is perhaps 0.0001%

However the "novel" flu's have death rates thousands of times higher. That's the excitement here. Once there's a highly contagious, high death rate "bug" or virus in the wild, humans will panic, for good reason. The black plagues played havoc with Europe's population and psyche. 

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I remember SARs causing a serious recession in some industries way back in '06 or so. And US exposure to China issues is much higher now.

My employer has thousands of folks in China. Recalling them and requiring senior executive override for any exceptions. Personally have a family member there. Not so worried for her health, but rather being trapped in the country for an extended period.

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53 minutes ago, John Foote said:

I remember SARs causing a serious recession in some industries way back in '06 or so. And US exposure to China issues is much higher now.

My employer has thousands of folks in China. Recalling them and requiring senior executive override for any exceptions. Personally have a family member there. Not so worried for her health, but rather being trapped in the country for an extended period.

SARS was 2003

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_SARS_outbreak

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1887121182_24jan12pm.thumb.png.c2fbb0768fb84cf59d674eba1e8a0ca1.png

Coronavirus Watch Update

Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Global Cases (by JHU CSSE)  [Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Center for Systems Science and Engineering]

As of Jan 24, 2020 12 pm EST

Map:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

Total Confirmed Worldwide - 939 - Last update: 3 minutes ago 

Total Deaths Worldwide - 26 (all in mainland China) - Last update: 3 minutes ago

Spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/169AP3oaJZSMTquxtrkgFYMSp4gTApLTTWqo25qCpjL0/edit#gid=865616908

 

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From the Oil Price main news site, by Tom Kool:

Oil Bears Are Back As Demand Fears Go Viral

... Impact of coronavirus grows. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs estimated that the coronavirus in China could shave off $3 from the price of oil. But the impact appears to be growing. China has quarantined Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. The travel restrictions were expanded on Friday, now affecting at least 35 million people. The virus helped drag down crude oil prices this week.  ...

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3 hours ago, wrs said:

These guys aren't using any petroleum are they? 

23825952-7923913-image-a-20_1579878630449.jpg.5e8b63932357c2128dac0189cd1f53f8.jpg

Chinese scramble to build 1000 bed hospital in 5 days.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7923913/Shanghai-Disney-closed-Saturday-help-prevent-spread-virus.html

If they can get even a crappy hospital built in 5 days that's impressive as heck.

Here we wouldn't even be able to pick a site in 5 days let alone break ground. Capitalism and bureaucracy has its downsides.  The request for proposal / tender might be finished in 5 days, maybe.

No, here we would retrofit school gymnasiums or something.

 

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1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

If they can get even a crappy hospital built in 5 days that's impressive as heck.

Here we wouldn't even be able to pick a site in 5 days let alone break ground. Capitalism and bureaucracy has its downsides.  The request for proposal / tender might be finished in 5 days, maybe.

No, here we would retrofit school gymnasiums or something.

 

Building even a crappy hospital in 5 days would be more like magic, and you are incorrect, over here we wouldn't be able to even consider having a hospital anywhere without years of study and design. Just getting to be in the place to pick a spot to put it would cost $$$$$$$. Then the permit jokes would begin. Then the traffic studies. Then the impact studies. Then the sewer/water studies. Then the drainage studies. Blah blah blah!! Everything is so badly mired in red tape anymore. And if any religion, or gay group, or girl scout troop, or homeless person whined about there being a hospital going up we would have to stop and do it all over again...

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3 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

1887121182_24jan12pm.thumb.png.c2fbb0768fb84cf59d674eba1e8a0ca1.png

Coronavirus Watch Update

Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Global Cases (by JHU CSSE)  [Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Center for Systems Science and Engineering]

As of Jan 24, 2020 12 pm EST

Map:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

 

Total Confirmed Worldwide - 939 - Last update: 3 minutes ago 

Total Deaths Worldwide - 26 (all in mainland China) - Last update: 3 minutes ago

Spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/169AP3oaJZSMTquxtrkgFYMSp4gTApLTTWqo25qCpjL0/edit#gid=865616908

My wife suspects that China is hiding total cases and total deaths. They wouldn't have quarantined a city the size of London if the death rate were only 3% and the infection rate only 0.000003%

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(edited)

Mother Nature keeping the population explosion in check. The elderly, poor, and young usually take the brunt of the illness' of the world. I never get a "flu" shot as it doesn't seem right to pump dead virus' into the body, and the chemicals that keep the shelf life 6 months in the vial. Will this new virus kill millions? Doubtful but if it does see first line.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/china-coronavirus-outbreak-country-scrambling-build-hospital

Edited by Old-Ruffneck
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9 hours ago, George8944 said:

SARS was a non-event because health officials jumped on it quickly and it spread differently.

An interesting article on the topic.    "This time it's different than SARS."

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/time-im-petrified-virologist-who-helped-discover-sars-offers-chilling-take-coronavirus

Look at the line at the bottom of the graph, from Johns Hopkins University.

Top line is confirmed cases in China, bottom line is confirmed cases in rest of the world.  Will revisit it tomorrow for updates.

24 Jan 4:30 pm

total.png.85e4618166a0fb945a7392f8ca19225a.png

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

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5 hours ago, wrs said:

Should have checked my old passport. I remember worrying I'd be trapped inside like a rat if I ran a fever as they thermo screened everyone. 

The point stands though, it played hell on a handful of industries and tanked some hi-tech companies for a time. And China had a much smaller impact on the US then proportionally than now. The rush to move manufacturing to China was just really getting going. I was doing quality assessments of a relatively small manufacturing site for an American company. Was 50 people at the China site then, 1,600 now.  And only 350 in North America today, about half in Mexico. However to be fair, the North American presence was less than 300 then, all in the LA basin. Property values made manufacturing in LA crazy. They still own it, but more money in renting the space than manufacturing.  

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8 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Look at the line at the bottom of the graph, from Johns Hopkins University.

Top line is confirmed cases in China, bottom line is confirmed cases in rest of the world.  Will revisit it tomorrow for updates.

24 Jan 4:30 pm

total.png.85e4618166a0fb945a7392f8ca19225a.png

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

25 Jan 12:00 am

544850647_total12am25jan.png.8782ce5fa7ce63105a8d6898ff31572c.png

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(edited)

Interesting piece on history of influenza and how they are named ie H1N2 etc

Hs and Ns

Influenza A and B viruses have two types of spikes that cover their surface – the haemagglutinin (H) and the neuraminidase (N). 

Viruses attach by their haemagglutinin onto receptors on the surface of cells in order to infect them, like a grappling hook. And the neuraminidase removes these receptors from infected cells at the right time to allow newly synthesised viruses to escape and spread.

Among influenza A viruses there are 17 different types of haemagglutinin, from H1 to H17 and nine different types of neuraminidase, from N1 to N9. Each virus has one type of H (such as H1) and one type of N (such as N1).

While most strains of influenza A viruses infect multiple types of birds, including poultry, ducks and geese, some strains also infect pigs. Indeed, avian influenza strains are endemic in wild birds, especially in Asia. But, interestingly, most birds don’t get ill from the flu.

The new H7N9 strain emerging in China does not make birds ill, for instance, but has been killing about a third of infected humans. The H5N1 strain, on the other, has evolved to kill birds and some humans who are infected from these birds. 

So, while there are many combinations of H and N seen in birds, widespread human infection has only been caused by a few. H1N1, which was responsible for the 1918 pandemic virus and the recent swine flu pandemic, H2N2, the 1957 Asian flu pandemic strain, and the H3N2 Hong Kong pandemic strain in 1968, which displaced the Asian flu.

The seasonal influenza A strains currently circulating in humans are H1N1 and H3N2, but they have changed a lot since their first introduction into humans. 

Influenza B strains do not circulate in animals, so they cannot cause a pandemic. But, like influenza A viruses, they continually change, so we will never become immune to every strain. 

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/molecules-to-medicine/h1n-what-wading-through-the-alphabet-soup-of-flu-names/

Edited by James Regan
Now wash your hands with alcohol or drink some...Fkit
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I bet everyone will have forgotten about this in a few weeks, just like all the other epidemics that never happened

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Johns Hopkins University - Center for Systems Science and Engineering - About Us

Modern, complex problems require the development of a new scientific way to analyze and address them – one that focuses on the connections between different disciplines. The goal of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) is to further the development of this science of interconnection.

Housed in the Johns Hopkins Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, CSSE takes a multidisciplinary approach to modeling, understanding, and optimizing systems of local, national, and global importance. These include medicine, health care delivery, national infrastructure, information security, disaster response, and education.  In addition to faculty from across multiple engineering departments, CSSE utilizes the expertise of researchers from the schools of Medicine, Public Health, Nursing, Arts and Sciences, Business, and Education; and from JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory, already one of the nation’s leading centers of systems engineering.  ...

 

========================================================================

PUBLIC HEALTH - Mapping the Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

By Lauren Gardner, January 23, 2020

Background

On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was informed of an outbreak of “pneumonia of unknown cause” detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China – the seventh-largest city in China with 11 million residents. As of January 23, there are over 800 cases of 2019-nCoV confirmed globally, including cases in at least 20 regions in China and nine countries/territories. The first reported infected individuals, some of whom showed symptoms as early as December 8, were discovered to be among stallholders from the Wuhan South China Seafood Market. Subsequently, the wet market was closed on Jan 1. The virus causing the outbreak was quickly determined to be a novel coronavirus. On January 10, gene sequencing further determined it to be the new Wuhan coronavirus, namely 2019-nCoV, a betacoronavirus, related to the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome virus (MERS-CoV) and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus (SARSCoV). However, the mortality and transmissibility of 2019-nCoV are still unknown, and likely to vary from those of the prior referenced coronaviruses.

Infected travelers (primarily air) are known to be responsible for introductions of the virus outside Wuhan. On Jan 13 Thailand reported the first international case outside China, while the first cases within China, but outside of Wuhan were reported on January 19, in Guangdong and Beijing. On January 20, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) confirmed that the coronavirus can be transmitted between humans. On the same day human infections with 2019-nCoV had also been confirmed in Japan and South Korea, and the following day cases in the U.S. and Taiwan were detected in travelers returning from Wuhan. On January 21 multiple provinces in China were also reporting new cases and infection was confirmed in 15 healthcare workers, with six fatalities reported. Additional travel cases have now been confirmed in Hong KongMacau, Singapore and Vietnam. On Jan 22, a WHO emergency committee convened to discuss whether the outbreak should be classified as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) under International Health Regulations, but were initially undecided due to lack of information, before deciding against the declaration.

Of immediate concern is the risk of further transmission resulting from high travel volumes and mass gatherings in celebration of the Chinese New Year on January 24. In attempts to mitigate local transmission within China, unprecedented outbreak control strategies were implemented in (initially) three cities. On 23 January 2020, Wuhan suspended  all public transport and air travel (in and out of the city), placing all 11 million city residents under quarantine. On Jan 24, Huanggang and Ezhou, cities adjacent to Wuhan, will also be placed under a similar quarantine, with more cities in China now following suit. Further, many cities have canceled Chinese New Year celebrations.

As Wuhan is a major air transportation hub in central China, various measures have been taken on a global scale to mitigate international spread. Targeted airport screening of passengers traveling from Wuhan was initiated as early as January 1 in Hong Kong and Macau. Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand starting to screen arriving passengers on January 3. In the U.S., the CDC began entry screening of passengers on direct and connecting flights from Wuhan to the three main ports of entry on January 17, 2020, with Atlanta and Chicago soon to be added. On January 23 the U.S. CDC raised its travel notice for Wuhan, China, to the highest of three levels. Additional Pacific and Asian countries including Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India are now also conducting targeted passenger screening at airports.

GIS Dashboard

In response to this ongoing public health emergency, we developed an online dashboard (static snapshot shown below) to visualize and track the reported cases on a daily timescale; the complete set of data is downloadable as a google sheet. The case data visualized is collected from various sources, including WHO, U.S. CDC, ECDC China CDC (CCDC), NHC and Dingxiangyuan. Dingxiangyuan is a website that aggregates NHC summaries and local CCDC reports in near real-time, providing more current regional case estimates than the national level reporting organizations are capable of, and is thus used for all the mainland China cases reported in our dashboard (confirmed, suspected, recovered, deaths). U.S. cases (confirmed, suspected, recovered, deaths) are taken from the U.S. CDC, and all other country (suspected and confirmed) case data is taken from the corresponding regional health departments. The dashboard is intended to provide the public with an understanding of the outbreak situation as it unfolds, with transparent data sources.

We are currently in the process of conducting additional modeling of this emerging outbreak, and will update this blog post with the results soon.

ncov-768x387.png
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13 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Pointless to link to the Mandarin sources but This is pretty chilling

Why are people so anxious to be diagnosed with the disease?  Apparently if you are a confirmed case, the govt pays for your care.  How odd, why?  Did the govt cause this disease? 

While the government has offered to pay for all expenses of patients confirmed to have the virus, those who have not yet received a positive test have been left to pay their own medical bills.

“I pay anything from hundreds to about 1,000 yuan [US$144] a day for medicines. There are many people like us. I saw many people who couldn’t afford the bill and just gave up coming and went home,” Xiaoxi said.

 

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3 hours ago, wrs said:

Why are people so anxious to be diagnosed with the disease?  Apparently if you are a confirmed case, the govt pays for your care.  How odd, why?  Did the govt cause this disease? 

While the government has offered to pay for all expenses of patients confirmed to have the virus, those who have not yet received a positive test have been left to pay their own medical bills.

“I pay anything from hundreds to about 1,000 yuan [US$144] a day for medicines. There are many people like us. I saw many people who couldn’t afford the bill and just gave up coming and went home,” Xiaoxi said.

Chinese are notoriously frugal. If they had to pay for treatment themselves they might opt for herbal remedies or take (useless) antibiotics for a viral disease. So the govt is smart to offer to pay. 

Last night my wife found out someone in her circle of friends has parents there, who both appear to be suffering from pneumonia. They're following orders and staying home like many others. The next question will be how many die in their apartments before all this gets sorted out? It's certain that we'll never know the whole truth from China state sources. Being communist types, they'll downplay the numbers. 

That said, as a quasi dictatorship they've been able to do things like quarantine entire cities that would have been virtually impossible to do in the US. Imagine if the US government tried to quarantine Los Angeles? Besides the lawsuits you'd have millions sneaking out any way they could. New York City? Fuhgeddaboutit. 

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