Today [9 March 2020] the financial markets have finally recognised the economic impact of the new coronavirus.

The Russian price war on oil markets has not led to the fall of today’s stock market, but has not helped either. Although cheap oil is supposed to be good for the economy, the fall will also affect the financial markets of the United States, where the fracking industry in the United States is heavily indebted and now destined for disappearance. The price of crude oil is expected to be reduced to $20 per barrel, as overproduction and falling demand for the virus coincide. Russia is well placed to win this price war. Others don't.

The virus pandemic has led to the slowdown in stock markets. But what makes the Sars-CoV-2 virus so dangerous, which is officially called the new coronavirus? The Covid-19 disease caused by the virus is basically a flu, but it does: it seems to be one of the most serious. But the flu is totally new and that's what makes it all the different.

Each year, about 15% of the world's population will be infected with one or more of the dozens of flu viruses we know. People get sick and most recover while developing immunity against this specific virus. By the way out, this will be added to the set of basic immunities of our societies. So many people have already had the flu from the causes we know, that most of them will not get the flu in the next flu season. We have also developed vaccines against the most known viruses. This allows people working in health services to continue working even in periods of hospitalization for many new patients affected by the flu.

But when a new virus develops, then everything is different. Our societies lack basic immunity against the new virus. If no action is taken against it, the first, second and third wave of new virus attacks will lead to the illness of many more people than in a normal flu season. Health workers will also need to be infected and quarantined. Some health workers could die. Hospitals will be overwhelmed and the entire healthcare system could be plummeted, as has happened in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The collapse of the health system will cause virus death to be much greater than that of a functioning health system.

A surgeon from Bergamon, in Italy, describes a situation like this:

“Cases have multiplied to 15-20 hospitalizations per day, all for the same reason. The results of the tests come back: positive, positive, positive. All of a sudden, the emergency room has been overwhelmed and moved to Donostia Hospital. The emergency protocol has been put in place, help is needed in the emergency room. A quick meeting to learn how to use the EHR [computerized medical history] of the emergency room and in a few minutes I'm already down, next to the war-front soldiers. The PC screen always denounces the same complaints: fever and respiratory distress, fever and cough, shortness of breath, etc. In the study, radiology always says the same phrase: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. Everyone needs hospitalization. Some require intubation and transfer to the ICU. For others, however, it is late. The ICU is full and when the ICUs are filled, more needs to be created. Each ventilator has become gold: those of the operating rooms that have suspended non-urgent surgeries will be used to convert the normal rooms to the ICU”.

The coronavirus mortality rate in Lombardy is 6%. In the Chinese province of Hubei, it is known how well a health system works with a mortality rate of patients with COVID-19 below 1%. The death of more people in Italy is not by the virus, it is by a health system that comes.

In addition, the health system that has exceeded the cases of COVID-19 cannot take care of the cases of common illness. People with acute heart attacks, diabetes problems, or children who have fallen out of a bicycle will be moved to hospitals that cannot be treated.

The only way to prevent such a catastrophic situation is to publicize the timeline of the epidemic:

We can do that if we reduce the number of reproductions of the disease. In normal circumstances, a person who is ill will infect two, three or more of those who are healthy. We can reduce these figures by banning large concentrations of people, isolating contaminated people and using good hygiene.

People who test positive or have symptoms should be quarantined. Everyone should be aware of the risks and learn how to avoid them. It helps hand washing, as soap easily destroys the layer of fatty lipid that forms the skin of the virus.

China’s control measures in Wuhan were designed to reduce reproduction numbers. The effective proliferation of Wuhan disease was reduced from 3.86 to 0.32 following these measures. Some of the measures taken by China were drastic, but they worked:

(Source: Evolving Epidemiology and Impact of Non-pharmaceutical Interventions on the Outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China)

South Korea has also shown that rapid and decisive action can keep the problem in controllable numbers and not at the ballot box.

If the virus passes through our societies in two or three light waves, our communities will develop a basic level of immunity. We can also have a vaccine against it in one or two years. So, the virus will become a little bit unsafe, like the ones we already know in advance.

An example of this is the 1968 Hong Kong flu. Then, the new H3H2 virus infected 500,000 people in Hong Kong. In 1968 and 1969, the Army killed more than one million people worldwide, although its mortality rate was less than 0.5 per cent. Today our populations are largely immune to this virus and H3H2 vaccine is part of today's flu vaccine cocktail.

Neither will a single country get rid of this virus and it will have a similar effect everywhere.

What we need to get now is to reduce the curves of the graph, to reduce the number of COVID-19 infections, so that our health system can cope with the epidemic.

In the United States the Sars-CoV-2 epidemic is still considered a problem that will happen in a week. The reason is that the president and much of the American population have not yet understood the problem.

[So, last year 37,000 Americans died from the common flu. Annual amounts range from 27,000 to 70,000. Nothing closes, life and economy remain the same. Currently, 546 cases of CrownVirus and 22 of them with a total number of deaths are confirmed. Think about it!]

But this is not a common flu. This is a new flu. Against this our basic immunity is zero. Without any countermeasures, the number of cases will increase dramatically and many cases will be considered serious. The health system is going to overflow and then everything is going to be different.

All countries must test every possible person to isolate positive cases. People who test positive but have no symptoms should not be sent to their families. China has learned that doing that only serves to create new cases, because it will make all family members sick. Symptom developers must isolate one by one, ensuring the surveillance service. Only 20% of these patients who will develop severe complications should be admitted to hospitals that are qualified for this.

Citizens must be able to pay their invoices, including those for quarantine. The simplest way to achieve this is to establish a legal obligation to pay for sick leave. Undocumented immigrants must have the opportunity to seek evidence and medical care, without fear of deportation. This requires an amendment to the current mandatory reporting scheme.

After the depression caused by the pandemic, more economic measures will have to be taken to revive the economy. A broad and varied public spending programme will bring better results. On the contrary, tax exemptions for the rich will not be valid.

[The Moon of Alabama blog, edited by one of Billmon's signatories, is one of the world's leading benchmarks in the monitoring of geopolitics and major international issues in general. The monitoring of the Covid-19 coronavirus is also being carried out from the very beginning, always using high guarantee sources. This post that we have posted in ARGIA was posted on Monday, March 9, by the following title: "Is the Coronavirus Really More Dangerous Than The Flu?"