Since the end of January there have been 4.3m coronavirus cases and 292k deaths. That is a period of a little more than 3 months. The world’s population is about 7.6 billion, 4.3m cases worldwide is about 0.06% of that population. During this coronavirus period total deaths worldwide have been about 150,000 per day. That is about 15 m during the same period as the coronavirus. Thus, coronavirus deaths are 1.9% of total deaths during the period.

Most deaths across the world are age related, about 60-70%, and higher in wealthier countries. This of course is the same for coronavirus, which also is thought to hit the elderly much harder than the rest of the population. So, although coronavirus is an insignificant cause of death, it seems to parallel the causes for total deaths.

So why the panic? The lockdowns and associated measures are causing economic and social destruction out of all proportion to the damage caused by the virus. There are other unexplained oddities. For example, Spain and Russia have about the same number of cases (250k), but the Spanish deaths per 1m population are 576, but only 14 for Russia.

It does seem that this panic perhaps has another cause or objective than that publicly stated. I have no intention of speculating what that might be, I guess we will find out in due course.

13 May 2020 Macro