Life in the city

Understanding Covid-19 and the economic impact

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Singapore government videos about the 2019-nCoV (Covid-19)

Infectious diseases physician, Dr. Leong Hoe Nam, on what we need to know about 2019-Coronavirus. Good for understanding Covid-19 and the economic impact.
Three videos are produced by Gov.sg where Dr. Leong Hoe Nam, an expert and practicing physician in Infectious Diseases gives his insights:

  • What we need to know about 2019-nCoV
  • Tips on protecting ourselves.
  • How it affects our daily routine

See: https://www.unscrambled.sg/2020/02/11/infectious-diseases-physician-dr-leong-hoe-nam-on-what-we-need-to-know-about-2019-coronavirus/

Infectious diseases physician, Dr Leong Hoe Nam, on what we need to know about 2019-Coronavirus

Highly recommended!

From other sources: How long does the coronavirus survive on a surface?
It is said that the coronavirus can survive only a very few hours on an object other than a living being and would die when dried up. Main transmission is still considered through coughing and body fluids from an infected person.

(source: Wechat posts)
Many persons however are not so sure… and many are “creative”… but also forget about their hands…

About the impact on industry and business

European businesses look to diversify operations outside China as coronavirus hits supply chains. China’s emergency measures to halt the spread of Covid-19 have put this year’s top-level summit with the EU at risk and risk disrupting the global supply chain, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China has warned, reported the South China Morning Post.
Even though Chinese officials said they were working to resume production, foreign businesses’ operations have been seriously disrupted and may be forced to look elsewhere for supplies, the Chamber said.
The group warned that manufacturers were not able to run at full capacity because of shortages of supplies such as masks and logistical problems caused by restrictions on movement.
Joerg Wuttke, president of the chamber, said the outbreak had made many businesses realize they had to diversify into other countries and avoid “putting all their eggs in one basket”. He said that while the Chinese market was “always a lure… people have now woken up to the fact that you must have a backup plan.” He continued: “You must have a good eye on diversity. And the China story, the only story, possibly is over.”
(Source: China Economic Review)

Fewer than a third of China’s nearly 300 million migrant laborers have returned to work.
China is grappling with competing demands to fight the Covid-19 epidemic and get its economy back on track, as businesses struggle to resume operations amid a shortage of workers, disrupted supply chains and sluggish demand, reported Caixin.
Industrial indicators illustrate slow resumption of economic activities, although policymakers have called for companies to restart production since last week. From Thursday to Monday, coal consumption by six major power plants supplying power to key production sectors likely fell around 49% from the comparable period last year, economists with Nomura International (Hong Kong) said.
Official estimates suggest that China’s migrant workers will make a total of around 300 million trips to return to the places they work in after the holiday, but only about 80 million trips had been made as of Friday, Liu Xiaoming, a vice minister of transportation, said on Saturday at a press conference.
Another 120 million trips will likely be made by the end of February, he said. This means about one-third of the country’s migrant workers will still not have returned to work at the beginning of March.
(Source: China Economic Review)

HSBC, one of Hong Kong’s most important banks, said it would cut 35,000 jobs over the next three years, in part because of disruptions caused by the outbreak.
The bank is working to cut US$4.5 billion in costs as it faces headwinds that include the outbreak and months of political strife in Hong Kong, one of its most important markets.
It was the latest company to show the impact of the fast-moving coronavirus that has gripped China, another one being Apple. Although many companies are getting back to work after a weekslong hiatus, the economy has been slow to get back on its feet.
(Source New York Times)

Coronavirus is seriously disrupting logistics in the Belgian industry. That was the first result from an investigation by the technology platform Agoria, that has members such as Proximus, Volvo Cars Gent and Siemens.
(Source: Belgian media)

La Libre Eco with Belga (14 Feb 2020)
The article claims that 49,000 non-Chinese companies are facing problems due to the virus. It could have world-wide consequences according to Altares Dun & Bradstreet. Also some 5 million companies around the world depend on Chinese imports.
Source: https://www.lalibre.be/economie/conjoncture/coronavirus-pres-de-50-000-entreprises-etrangeres-actives-dans-les-regions-chinoises-touchees-5e46712cf20d5a642285eb72

The world could face a shortage of antibiotics if the pharmaceutical industry’s supply problems posed by the coronavirus outbreak in China cannot soon be resolved, the head of a European business group in China warned on Tuesday, reported Reuters.
EU Chamber of Commerce President Joerg Wuttke told a roundtable in Beijing that the synchronization of supplies in China was being hampered by the outbreak, also highlighting problems in the car industry, while inventories were surging.
He also noted that companies were running out of packaging material and faced challenges with regulatory uncertainties.
(Source Reuters)

Prevention and cure Covid-19

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

The debate about masks

There is a lot of discussion about prevention and cure Covid-19. Most people miscalculate how to prevent the virus. Massive home disinfecting has mostly no meaning if there are no visitors and if the few who enter immediately take off shoes and gloves (and like me put them on the heating to kill the germs). And of course wash hands and disinfect mobile with an alcohol tissue.

SCMP wrote:
Most doctors agree that the masks offer protection, but mainly from a wearer’s own hands rather than from airborne pathogens.
The primary purpose of surgical face masks is to prevent surgeons infecting patients during surgery, not to protect the wearer.
“The surgical mask is designed to prevent what is in the surgeon’s nose and mouth from getting into the surgical wound.”
Although medical specialists do not entirely agree on the effectiveness of masks against airborne germs, they do find consensus on the danger from hands and fingers, in spreading disease by touching potentially infected surfaces such as door handles. That information seems to be of greater benefit to the general public and is the reason all health authorities stress the importance of washing hands.
“One of the things the mask prevents you from doing is putting your hands, your fingers, on your nose and mouth, and that may help reduce transmission.”

My take: I have been using N95 masks for many years whenever pollution levels pass a certain level, when on my bicycle. That at least WORKS (see the difference new – used)! A good mask has a meaning in crowded places to avoid droplets in the air from infected people. And right now when I go shopping on my bicycle I use a motorcycle helmet with a full face visor.
More to come on this, wait for link to Singapore Government recommendations.

Experimental treatments for Covid-19

SCMP reports about experimental treatments for Covid-19 (15 Feb 20)
Plasma and stem cell therapy possible treatments
Zhang Xinmin, director of the science and technology ministry’s biology center, said the trial of convalescent plasma – taken from the blood of recovered Covid-19 patients – on 11 people with the virus had so far yielded positive results, with no side effects.
About 70 Shenzhen patients had also shown positive progress, with fewer side effects, to Favipiravir, an experimental antiviral drug. Meanwhile, Remdesivir, a US drug used to treat the Ebola virus, is being tested on 168 Wuhan patients presenting severe symptoms and 17 others with milder symptoms.

The Chinese government is also supporting research into stem-cell therapy as a potential treatment for the disease.
Research was under way into the use of stem cell therapy and rheumatology medicines used to treat systemic inflammatory response syndrome (Sirs) which has been found in some patients.
A computer model has been built to screen more than 70,000 drugs, eventually shortlisting about 100 existing medications for further experiment.
Of those chloroquine phosphate, an antimalarial agent, had responded well and was being tested on about 100 patients in Beijing and the southern province of Guangdong.

Second batch of experimental Gilead Coronavirus Drug arrives in Wuhan
A second batch of Gilead Sciences Inc.’s experimental antiviral drug remdesivir has arrived in Wuhan, where it will be tested on patients infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus, reported Caixin.
The drug was transported from the US to China by FedEx to be distributed to hospitals in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, for two ongoing clinical trials on a combined 760 patients.
They follow some 3,400 doses of the drug and 900 placebo doses that reached Wuhan’s Jinyintan hospital last week as part of Phase 3 trials, which began on Feb 6.
The trials are randomized, controlled and double-blinded, meaning neither doctors nor their patients know whether they are using the active drug or a placebo, so researchers can determine whether patients truly benefited from the new treatment or recovered on their own.

China Daily on medication

On 17 February China Daily published two articles.
The first one details the progress made with plasma therapy, and the difficulties to carry it out.
The second article gives a very good overview on the 3 areas of interest:

– medication
– vaccine
– treatment
– diagnosis

Because of its interest, see here the PDF:

200217 CDmedicine.pdf

It is a nice addition to the SCMP article I quoted.

WHO delegation without Americans?

SCMP 15 Feb 20
Mistrust between Beijing and Washington has tainted US offers of help to contain a deadly coronavirus outbreak, forcing the WHO into a political corner, analysts said.
US officials said they first offered to send American specialists to China as part of a WHO mission in early January but despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s calls to deepen international cooperation in the public health crisis, that offer had yet to be accepted.
US officials said on Thursday that no American had been invited to China to take part, despite Americans accounting for 13 of the 25 names that the WHO submitted to China for the mission.
On last Friday, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the final WHO team comprised of 12 international experts and 12 from China, and would begin its investigation into the spread of the outbreak and its severity in the past weekend.

Update: still confusing situation as it seems American specialists did finally join.
However experts said the international team would be left with an “incomplete picture” of the outbreak if it did not go to Wuhan or Hubei; China said “Hubei was at a critical moment in its fight to stop the virus and might not have the capacity to work with the WHO mission right now.”

WHO said late on Sunday that the future path of the outbreak was “impossible” to predict, as international experts began meeting their counterparts in China.

Breaking news (but not a surprise)

China postpones year’s biggest political event amid coronavirus outbreak!
China’s annual parliamentary meeting, that was scheduled for early March, has been postponed, apparently because of the Covid-19 outbreak. It is known as the “Two Sessions”.

Mandatory 14 days quarantine

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Foreigners also facing restrictions to enter Beijing

Over the weekend, panic among expats with the “rumors” of the mandatory 14 days quarantine for anybody returning to Beijing. And yes, also applies to foreigners returning from Europe. See what started the “rumor”:

Finally I got the official document (click to open): 200216 BJFA
That means 14 days quarantine for people coming in Beijing. If unluckily you have someone in your plane/train showing symptoms you are good to stay at a “designated public quarantined area” for observation instead of “home quarantine”, whatever that means.
As a result my wife is not coming and stays in Brussels.

Way to go…

That also means: there is no point for businesspeople to come here, they will be locked up in their hotel (who pays?). And Beijing residents returning home might reconsider.
Beijing, more and more isolated.

Evacuation of foreigners

More and more foreign countries have, are or will evacuate their citizens from Wuhan. In other cities, such as in Beijing, there is still a way to leave. Where one can go is another problem. A majority of airlines has cancelled all flights with China. Most Chinese airlines still operate but with reduced frequencies.
But many countries restrict access, see here the present list from IATA:
https://www.iatatravelcentre.com/international-travel-document-news/1580226297.htm

To Tame Coronavirus, Mao-Style Social Control Blankets China

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/business/china-coronavirus-lockdown.html
Extract from this rather chilling article:

Residential lockdowns of varying strictness — from checkpoints at building entrances to hard limits on going outdoors — now cover at least 760 million people in China, or more than half the country’s population, according to a New York Times analysis of government announcements in provinces and major cities.
Throughout China, neighborhoods and localities have issued their own rules about residents’ comings and goings, which means the total number of affected people may be even higher. Policies vary widely, leaving some places in a virtual freeze and others with few strictures.
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has called for an all-out “people’s war” to tame the outbreak. But the restrictions have prevented workers from returning to factories and businesses, straining China’s giant economy. And with local officials exercising such direct authority over people’s movements, it is no surprise that some have taken enforcement to extremes.

The bureaucrats failed to listen to the president

As per SCMP and other media:
President Xi Jinping told the Communist Party’s top echelon to tackle an outbreak of a previously unknown coronavirus almost two weeks before Chinese authorities announced that there had been human-to-human transmission of the disease, according to an internal speech released on Saturday.
In the speech to the party’s most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee, Xi outlined a contingency plan to respond to a crisis that he said could not only hamper the health of people in China, but also jeopardize the country’s economic and social stability – even its open-door policy.
The speech was delivered on February 3 and published in the party’s bimonthly journal Qiushi on Saturday. It was also featured on state television and other official mouthpieces.

Postal services stopped

Bpost, Belgian Post, is stopping mail and packages to China s they claim “there are no flights available”. Not correct as Hainan Airlines still operates. Post from China is still OK…
Deutsche Post also informed it will not send packages to China.

The Chinese model is questioned

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Questions and uncertainties

The Covid-19 impacts many businesses, but there is more. The Chinese model is questioned. Alarm lights are flashing for the US-China phase-one trade deal. Observers look at what they call flaws in the Chinese model.

 

Beijing battles a “crisis of Chernobyl proportions’’ in coronavirus outbreak. Public fury is growing, with calls for more freedom of speech, but most observers don’t expect any dramatic changes.
We all hope for the best and support the efforts to contain the epidemic, but we also hope the Chinese government will learn some lessons.
Watch my short clip of support (need VPN):
https://www.facebook.com/lachineaupresent/videos/2634126666817695/

Oui, je reste en Chine！

La Chine vit aujourd’hui un véritable drame collectif déclenché par la propagation du coronavirus. Beaucoup de monde se sont inquiétés de la sécurité des étrangers en Chine. Pour cela, nous les avons donc contactés pour qu’ils partagent avec nous leurs expériences et leur sentiments.La porte-parole du ministère des Affaires étrangères de Chine, Mme Hua Chunying a déclaré le 6 février à la presse, que la Chine continuerait de garantir la sécurité et les soins aux étrangers en Chine ainsi que les soins aux citoyens chinois. Les mesures d’hygiène et de prévention sont traduites en quasiment toutes les langues, les étrangers en Chine peuvent rester au courant de l’évolution de l’épidémie et des règles à respecter. Mais ils ont en colère lorsqu’ils lisent ou regardent certains reportages injustes dans les médias occidentaux. La Chine a pris toute une série de mesures qui donnent maintenant de bons résultats, comme l’a confirmé l’OMS. Tout ce qu’il faut, c’est attendre car les virus obéissent à des cycles. Maintenant, tous les étrangers en Chine font confiance à la Chine. Allez la Chine! Allez Wuhan !

Posted by La Chine au Présent LCAP on Thursday, February 13, 2020

The same clip was also posted on Wechat (with no need for VPN).
Earlier they posted a text version. Some screenshots of the clip.

Uncertainty around the US-China phase-one trade deal

The deal between USA and China was signed when events in Wuhan made key terms doubtful from the start. How could China meet its additional US$200 billion purchase commitments?
And then the coronavirus epidemic made the improbable impossible.
“The coronavirus outbreak could reduce Chinese purchases of US agricultural products this year under the Phase 1 trade deal signed by the two countries”, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said as reported by Reuters.

The Chinese government cannot dictate consumer choices. Out of public health concerns, cinemas in China are closed. So, who will watch American films.
Chinese tourists must choose whether they travel to the U.S. or Europe. Major US airlines have stopped flying to mainland China and the US has basically barred the entry of non-American citizens. Reduced travel means also less urgency to buy Boeing jets. Tourism revenue in USA to plummet, even more than in Europe.
Some of the intended contracts need communication and meetings. Difficult now that people can’t travel anymore.
How to implement the inflated purchase promises when there is less Chinese demand and the volumes were too large to start with.

Flaws in the Chinese model

As discussed in the SCMP, the epidemic exposes fundamental flaws in China’s economic model. I have to agree with many of their views, as part of their comments.
Beijing is reluctant to fix it, as it does not want to tackle the excessive concentration of power, with information and resources now more and more in the hands of a powerful state, read, of the Party.

Beijing will continue to strengthen centralized control, and that’s is a greater threat for China’s future than the virus itself.
China can build a hospital in ten days. An overly centralized political system makes it possible for the government to place emphasis on delivering quick and impressive results but also on doing the wrong things, leading to further disaster.

The central government is increasingly reliant on state-owned enterprises and state money to maintain social stability and to deliver economic results, all while the private economy is gradually marginalized.

Many private business owners in China have noticed a change that they are not welcomed or loved in the new system.
China has suffered important capital outflows as many wealthy Chinese people, and even the urban middle class, have scrambled to move money out of the country. Private investment at home has suffered. Some of the people I know only want one thing: get their money out.

In such an increasingly centralized system, decision-making power is concentrated at the top, and information is filtered through the different levels of governments. If the top decision makers prefer stability more than anything else, the system will just automatically suppress and filter out information that can paint a different and unwelcome picture. That is the direct cause of the coronavirus outbreak, which was seriously under-reported or even covered up before January 20, see further.

Economists cited 2003 SARS as an example of how China’s economic growth can recover quickly from the coronavirus outbreak. They ignore the fact that the Chinese economy has completely changed since SARS. That time, China was integrating into the world economy and was dismantling at least in part its state sector economy.

Wuhan messed it up

source BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51449675

On 30 December, Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist working in Wuhan’s Central Hospital, posted his concerns in a private medical chat group, advising colleagues to take measures to protect themselves.
A few days later, he was summoned by the police and made to sign a confession, denouncing the messages he’d posted as “illegal behavior”.
The authorities, though, were well aware of the outbreak of illness.
The day after Dr. Li posted his message, China notified the WHO, and the day after that, the suspected source – the market – was closed down.
Doctors were already setting up quarantine rooms and anticipating extra admissions when Wuhan held its important annual political gathering, the city’s People’s Congress. In their speeches, Party leaders made no mention of the virus.
The National Health Commission continued to report that the number of infections was limited and that there was no clear evidence that the disease could spread between humans.
On 18 January the Wuhan authorities allowed a massive community banquet to take place, involving more than 40,000 families. The aim was to set a record for the most dishes served at an event.
Two days later, China finally confirmed that human-to-human transmission was indeed taking place.

Caixin reported that Beijing had its first COVID-19 patient on January 12, Guangdong’s first was January 4, Shanghai’s was January 15.
Just yesterday the government changed the way counting cases of infection and deaths, to improve the former non-transparent way of counting (as mentioned in my previous post). A step forward in transparency. Hubei province reported a spike in new confirmed cases and deaths after change in diagnostic criteria. Now doctors have broader discretion to determine which patients are infected.

The impact of Covid-19

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

The vulnerable

The impact of Covid-19 on China’s small businesses remains unclear in terms of magnitude, but the vulnerable ones are already closing shop. I already mentioned this topic in earlier posts.
The King of Party, a KTV club in Beijing, said it would terminate employment for all 200 staff (I think one of their major karaoke is in my street gongti xi lu); Xinchao Media, an advertising agency that runs commercials in elevators, said it would cut 500 jobs on Monday; and Xibei Restaurant, a chain with more than 300 stores outlets across the country, said it would be unable to survive for three months without revenue. Those are some of the many only…

China’s private economy contributes more than 60% of the country’s economic output, and creates more than 90% of new jobs. Its health is critical to China’s overall economic performance.

Many shopping malls have reduced their business hours or closed completely, while massages, spa, gyms, karaoke bars and movie theaters have closed to help contain the spread of the virus. Blockbuster movie premieres have been postponed and many performance venues have cancelled shows.

Workers remain productive on home front

As per China Daily on 11 February.
Deserted roads, near-empty subway cars and offices without workers are normally the last scenes you would expect to see in Beijing, especially after the weeklong Spring Festival holiday.
Amid the Covid-19 outbreak, people have been encouraged to stay indoors and many companies have asked their employees to work from home to reduce the risk of being infected.

According to a report from Ding-Talk, internet giant Alibaba’s business collaboration and communication platform, some 200 million people are working from home due to the outbreak. More than 10 million companies in China are using DingTalk to contact such employees. As far as I know Morel’s Restaurant is a happy user of DingTalk to connect with the employees.

The report also said that over 200 education bureaus in more than 20 provinces, including Guangdong, Henan and Shanxi, are using Ding-Talk to launch online courses for over 12 million students from some 20,000 middle and primary schools. To support this unprecedented demand, the company has added more cloud servers to facilitate videoconferences and live group broadcasts.

The coronavirus test

Here a look at a Belgian website: you can do on online test about the coronavirus, set up by VUB (Vrije Universiteit Brussel):
www.coronavirustest.be or http://huis.vub.ac.be/corona/

You can chose between Dutch, French, English, German and Spanish.

After submitting your replies you will get an assessment.

Questions:

What is your gender? Man    Woman
What is your year of birth?
In which country do you live?
Do you have a fever (38.5 degrees or more)?           Yes  No
Do you have pain when you breathe?           Yes  No
Are you short of breath?         Yes     No
Do you have to cough?          Yes     No
Are you coughing up mucus? Yes     No
Do you have a sore throat?    Yes     No
Do you have a runny nose?   Yes     No
Do you have muscle pain?     Yes     No
Do you take medication that reduces your immunity?           Yes     No
Have you been in China during the 14 days that preceded your complaints?          Yes   No
Did you have close physical contact with someone with a proven corona infection during the 14 days preceding your symptoms?        Yes    No

Tip: runny nose and mucus are not indication of the virus.

Most recent news: while the median incubation time is said to be three days, it could be as long as 24 days and it is making detection much more difficult.

China’s health authorities have decided to no longer count as confirmed cases those patients who test positive but don’t show symptoms. Experts were skeptical, and it was another factor that made it harder to determine the true scale of the epidemic. As reported by NYT and many other media.
The death toll is also said to be seriously underreported as medical staff are not allowed to list coronavirus as a cause of death when cases had not been confirmed. Instructions even bans them from listing “pneumonia”. Instead they have to write the immediate cause of a patient’s death, such as diabetes or organ failure. Another known issue is with the difficulty in getting some patients to hospital in time. Some pass away at home because they could not reach the hospitals in time. In all those cases it’s “not the coronavirus”…

Humor is alive

As one friend said, 1 April arrived early. I was also (happily) misled with the “news”.

One Wechat post explained that according to NASA 11 February was the only day of the year when a broom can stand up because of earth’s gravity. Many Chinese friends were posting pics of their brooms standing up, I thought (as a “clever engineer”) that it was not possible.

Then I tried myself and became all excited. A friend said, the brooms would fall down after 59 minutes. I went to check regularly and the brooms remained upright.

The next morning they were still in place.

Then a clever French Rotaractor broke the news:
The truth is, you can make a broom stand upright today… and tomorrow and the day after… and the day after that. It has nothing to do with the earth’s gravitational pull on a certain day. It also has nothing to do with the vernal equinox (another day of the year when this “magic” supposedly happens).
Instead, it has everything to do with balance. The center of gravity is low on a broom, and rests directly over the bristles. Which means, if you can get the bristles positioned like a tripod, your broom will stand upright any day of the year.
Hey! It was fun!

There are also some pretty hilarious video clips going around of people singing about the virus.
This one is my favorite:

mylittleWuhanone

(click to play)