President Trump was clearly rattled and nervous as he addressed the nation tonight regarding the coronavirus.
Trump banned all travel from Europe, except the UK, starting travel. This seems to apply to shipments of goods as well. “Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing,” said Trump.
The WSJ commented “The president suggested the restrictions would apply to goods shipped into the U.S. from Europe.”
If so, the supply chain disruptions will be staggering.
Already, the ISM says 75% of Companies Suffer From Coronavirus Supply Chain Disruptions . This will compound the disruptions.
Note: Trump was not very clear as I am now told “White House has clarified that the Europe ban DOES NOT apply to goods and trade reports.”
Did Trump make a mistake with an ad-lib?
His speech was accompanied by heavy breathing at times. It was clear he did not want to be saying what he was saying.
Despite his travel ban on Italy which should have come earlier, he blamed the EU tonight for not acting soon enough or strong enough.
“Taking early intense action, we have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United states than are now present in Europe. The European Union failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hotspots.“
Trump displayed no empathy for Italy and little for US citizens.
His own assurances as recently as a week ago that the coronavirus was no big deal can now readily be seen as lies. He was forced to walk back recommendations that people can go to work. Trump offered small business loans for those impacted.
But loans are loans, they have to be paid back. The loss of profits and wages on those impacted will be enormous, especially on importers and exporters dependent on the EU.
Yet, in another feeble attempt to downplay the significance of what’s going on, Trump called this a “temporary moment in time that we will overcome as a nation, and as a world.”
Full Speech Video – Please Play
Futures Reaction
I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but the futures are reacting strongly now with the Nasdaq and S&P down nearly 4%.
Trump’s speech did not go over well and was not reassuring to say the least.
A recession has started.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
President Trump was FORCED to put into place regressive measures by our deep state
did you see were our corrupt congress is still trying to find dirt – so sorry dimwits of DNC but we can’t help stupid
Philippines president Duterte, Trump fan boy who preceded Trump by 9 months getting elected in 2016 on a rock-the-boat platform, not to mention part time reputed drug lord and traitor to his own country (rumored to be bought by China to give up the territorial claims of PH recognized by the United Nations intl law) aped Trump today (3/12/20) by closing Manila for 30 days starting Sunday to all travel (even cars to and from the city). Trouble is, there’s panic hoarding says my girl there (I’m in Greece now, my flight to Manila canceled) and who wants to be stuck in a city of around 30M people in a radius of about 100 km / 63 miles, rapidly being infected? So my girl is going to get out of town with her friends and relatives before the Sunday lockdown. Might happen in the USA, as has happened in north Italy, too. DJ-30 to 10k…soon.
Could always be worse, the citizens of Russia are completely in the dark. Health care system in Russia is atrocious. One has to wonder if Putin is hiding the Russian epidemic?
Of course it could be worse. We could wake up (or not….), to find the Sun having gone supernova ahead of schedule. That’s a genuinely hard problem.
As opposed to something which a bunch of communists have already solved and published a perfectly viable solution to. If “we” just had the aptitude to understand and implement the solution. Which we, of course, don’t. Since it involves something marginally more complimecated than robbing competent people for the benefit of idiots living large on welfare, by way of ever more economically illiterate debasement, while thumping ones chest like all the other monkeys are doing.
Most of the cases to the US actually came through cruise ships. But the cruise ship industry is allowed to operate as usual. I agreed with the travel ban but the cruise ships also need to stop until the virus is under control.
Without testing we have no idea what the situation is. As of March 8, only 1,700 Americans had been checked for the virus — a number that pales in comparison to the 50,000 who have been tested in Italy or the 23,000 tested in the UK, according to an analysis by Business Insider.
A new preprint on the scale of US spread estimated that, by March 1, there were already 9,484 Covid-19 cases in the US. That’s about nine times the 1,034 cases reported nationally.
“Looking at all the signs, and there are many, it would be shocking to me if we didn’t have large numbers of cases undetected, silently transmitting in the community, in multiple countries and regions,” said Lawrence Gostin, the director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University.
link to medrxiv.org
Honesty is antithetical to the State. Remember, when it gets serious, you have to lie.
This would be a trying situation for anyone, not just a complete fucking moron like Trump.
The stock market is clearly not impressed with trumpy’s waffling and pency’s prayer group.
Love the Trump Hating, 1-Man Babble Band, The Mish. Watching him on Kaiser Report is painful. No solutions to put forth just nasty opinion on a Man/Trump concerned with the USA and the Job he is attempting to do with some pride, ideas and empathy. The deep state has now fathomed a “Poison Story” to shut us down and with the help of the media we can now watch our High School Kids Sports via Close Circuit TV. What would you do Mish?, nothing most likely. You’re a complainer and critic sitting in a small room and getting 80 replies per article. My last comment you deleted. You are so hands on since you have no Staff. Your article is a “Feeble Attempt” to criticize but provide no solutions. Bite it and “Breath Heavily”.
I’m surprised you come here any more. There are plenty of places on the internet that will tell you exactly what you want to hear. There are 10x more that will laugh at you, but you don’t have to visit them. I like you around though… you’re a hilarious caricature of what a liberal thinks a conservative is.
“I like you around though… you’re a hilarious –confirmation– of what a liberal thinks a conservative is.”
TFTFY
“His own assurances as recently as a week ago that the coronavirus was no big deal can now readily be seen as lies. He was forced to walk back recommendations that people can go to work.”
Democrats who run L.A. County declared an emergency on March 4. They did not ban people from going to work. Mayor Garcetti mentioned something about elevator buttons.
I wonder what a corona virus amelioration effort among homeless, non-insured, and/or non-working people would involve cost wise compared to the cost of not including them in testing, treatment, and some financial support?
That is, surely ignoring the virus repository among millions of people would have measurable costs to the nation over time (continued reinfection, ER use, lack of cheap labor), and what would be the ROI (sorry for crassness) in taking care of them?
We are missing the major part elimination of the Payroll Tax revisions. A tax cut that will impact more than the top 1%. This is a major move in draining the swamp something Trump has promised to do! Needs to push this hard. Instant relief to all working Americans and businesses. No time to talk about fiscal responsibilities that bus left the station many years ago!
No point in a payroll tax cut if you have no job/pay
“Trump has promised” LOL!
Is it weakness rob pivot when you realise you’ve effed up?! 🤔
Gd luck, frens in US, Europe (and the UK); stay safe.
Lol,
the Orange Muppet will be eating most of his lies,probably within a month at most.Truly deserving of Lead Circus Clown .
I confronted a San Antonio health official who insisted that she knew there were only 8 cases here, all quarantined at Lackland AFB. I said there is hardly testing being done – there could be hundreds or thousands of cases. After that she left in a huff.
Hey, just woke up from a 30-day nap and noticed the trade deficit with China is way down. So it looks like Trump’s tariffs are finally working?
Did I miss anything else?
Pandemic Viruses don’t discriminate and they are real and ot fake. Maybe this is what it will take for Trump to deal with reality.
Reality is that Democratic run L.A. County should not have allowed the Lakers/Clippers basketball game on Sunday. On Wednesday the NBA suspended all games.
Touch screen voting, the day before L.A. County declared an emergency, was a bad idea as well.
I agree. Shows that bad ideas are not the exclusive domain of Republicans.
On the other hand, the very infectious yearly cold is typically a coronavirus.
Anyway, we shall know very soon if Trump is infected or not, but that is a great decision from the US. Over here in Europe we are in this mess mainly because
As i wrote here about some weeks ago, containment measures are a must in every country and the service economy is the first to be doomed.
Any way,
To my knowledge, NO European country locked down travel from China soon enough. Britain was still flying 3000 a day in. And until a few days ago, we were doing the same with people from Italy. The argument goes that such measures are ineffective. However – and this is a little selfish – adding additional cases, or filling our few intensive care wards with tourists – is not great planning.
Serious question, Jimmy: could we really have stopped this? For my mind, this is totally and utterly out of control. The genie is out of the lamp and this is going haywire now. The Italians have shut the country down because the medical establishment there is begging for mercy and the politicians have finally thrown the towel in. At this point is containment really an option worth pursuing?
We have asians who went to germany and france in mid February and came back infected, your blaming italy is just that – blaming others when you have not been taking precautions while china was being locked down.
Most infectious cold viruses are Rhinoviruses. There are four coronaviruses that are around, too, but are only responsible for 10-15% of what we call “colds”. They can, however, be more somewhat more serious that rhinoviruses. The two most common one are OC43 and 229E.
Trump and Pence both have vaccines.
The coronavirus has done little to deter Donald Trump from shaking hands with his fans – despite official advice telling people to avoid the greeting.
A video has emerged showing the 73-year-old US president enthusiastically shaking hands with a crowd of supporters shouting “we love you” and “good job” after touching down in Florida.
Mike Pence, the vice-president, has previously said neither he nor Mr Trump will stop shaking hands, despite authorities advising against it.
I wonder who the Republican nominee will be in November, then? Weld, I guess. He’s the only other person running.
At this rate, The Generals will have rendered it moot.
Judging by classification of information, concerns about “China” and how the virus makes “Iran more dangerous,” they look to be increasingly running the show already.
If Trump was going to ban all flights and packages from Europe, then he should have banned all entry into the US. If someone can fly into Canada and Mexico, they can cross into the US by land.
The point is to slow the spread down. It’s way past stopping it entirely.
They will check travel history is what I understand.
Actually they can’t. Or at least they can’t from Mexico. I’ve heard that the Mexicans are going to build a wall … to prevent infected Americans from crossing over.
I see a new problem looming for the equity markets: negative prices. There are definitely a few in the S&P you’d have to pay me to take now, and I’m not sure the front-running algo servers are set up to handle negative pricing…
How can a company be priced in minus numbers? It’s either worth nothing, or it’s worth something.
Maybe you were being humorous, in which case i apologise.
Part of me wants to make fun of this new Low Energy Donald but bad news is rolling in too fast to be flippant.
Heading out this evening to stock up on more stuff, don’t want to be caught off guard in the event of a quarantine or travel restriction.
One of the staffers for a US Senator just tested positive
I’d bet he’s got the Wuhan virus. That doesn’t look or sound like someone who’s just uncomfortable, it looks like someone who’s sick.
Nah, it’s the long-term effects of using fake tan
All I know is that if they are classifying information, it must be worse than they are telling us. That has to scare the market. I’m thinking more like 10% down than 4% down. You re-assure people by being open and honest. You scare people by telling them there are things so bad that they can’t be told.
10-4 Carl….just be honest
I agree. One can’t help but think that the government is operating with more information than the average person is. I guarantee it.
It depends what is being classified.
Case numbers, testing and on the ground information should be transparent.
Deeper strategy, geo-political implications and so on, not nescessarily.
Very bluntly, this virus might feasibly be the opening round of a form of bio-warfare. It might be taken as such until confirmed otherwise.
You don’t expect a president to say “We are ascertaining whether we are dealing with bio-warfare agents”.
You think that would reassure anyone, think again.
You don’t expect a government to release sensitive planning information either at a time when the whole national and global balance is readjusting harshly, possibly conflictively.
Infections, possible quarantines and other developments which could be temporarily affecting military units and their readiness, is likely classified.
And this is exactly what will happen with them classifying the information. As people know they can’t get information from Pence, they will turn to sketchy internet sites, and people will panic.
I think we are not looking in the right direction for information we need maybe. People are looking at political and top management decision questions, fair enough, but the info that stands out for lacking that should be available openly is more basic. Case info, age groups, condition, exact test criteria, local maps of infection, follow up data on those that have recovered, information on transmission and epidemiology. You have to search a hundred sites to find a fraction of this information.
Without this data being open and accessible we cannot verify what we are being told is the circumstance, we cannot judge the suitability of decisions being taken. It is not sensitive information, it is information that cannot be brushed over or hidden without it looking like it is being manipulated.
/\ THIS!
And to add one further thing, people (presumably not those on this blog) need to STOP looking to the government and thinking it will save them. Don’t just do your own data analysis, do your own pandemic planning.
For example, i put this together on 3rd February.
No cases confirmed in county: carry on life as normal, but slowly build stocks of food and painkillers,.
Cases in county, none in town: avoid crowds, no other restrictions
First case in local area: daughter does not go to indoor play areas, outside in sunny weather ok, not in damp or overcast (viruses don’t like UV). Begin Multivitamin dosing. No visits to grandparents, video calls only. No tradesmen (we have some renovation going on).
First cluster of cases in local area: self isolate as much as possible. Use own bags when shopping, keep shopping below £30 to avoid needing to touch card machines. No use of any shops/restaurants that use touch screen ordering. Watch behaviour of shop staff particularly with regard to hygiene and treat purchases appropriately.
The flaw in this plan is that the govt is not publishing data on local area. We are stage 3 at the moment, but its possible that the case is just rumour.
But yeah, don’t rely on the govt. A lot of people are blindly nodding along, without realising that what is happening in Italy WILL happen here, and they will see their elderly and not so elderly loved ones wheeled into an ambulance, never to be seen or heard from again.
Hope this translate link posts
If not original in Italian
It explains quarantine and periods of transmission after recovery.
If there’s any chance at all this was an engineered virus watch the anger spill over. The Gov knows much more than it’s telling.
The rates of eded admission to ICU are such that the US will creak at the seams.
Head if Italuan Medical is reported dead due to it – 67 yes old, was still working. Anyone over 55 is vulnerable even if free from other chronic diseases.
Various younger serious cases also, not being advertised but I find them on local media. Old and weak are first casualties, Mattia patient 1, 38 yrs in Italy only just regained consciousness – hopefully has survived many days (two weeks? ) of ICU, the old don’t or are not offerred, because overburdened in Italy. So ICU full and younger patients succumbing in the next few weeks probably. Very very sad. Italian doctor says many younger around 50 yrs displaying respiratory distress.
China just launched an accusation at US over virus origin.
People have their own intuitions, are cautious with them for the implications.
They are surely classifying much of the information about their internal discussions because it would be politically embarrassing. (Like that “classified” perfect phone call.) As far as the scary parts that they are classifying, that info has probably already been reported elsewhere, i.e., likely number of infections, number requiring hospitalization, limits of our healthcare system to treat the sick, inability to ramp up testing, etc. Follow the Fauci if you want the Facts. BTW – apparently a number of CDC pros couldn’t attend the classified meetings because they lacked the necessary clearances. Doh!
oh yes we keep track of all the homeless and vagabonds in every location and their individual health
I think we have to be careful of falling prey to fear, Carl. You, I and some others were very fact-based when this kicked off in China. I agree that transparency is important, but i suspect this is political – probably the actual number of cases ratehr than the actual number of deaths. Could Trump survive if it was revealed there were already one million cases?
There is plenty of data coming from other countries that provides assurance on fatality rates, particularly in South Korea, although i note that the fatality rate can vary by location and time and for many reasons.
Forget the facts – it’s about the narrative. That’s politics these days. The citizenry are treated as though they are dumb as a box of hammers.
The health Minister of england tested positive. She shook hands with most of parliament and was with BJ for 1/2 a day while contagious. Glad Trump can still play golf there!
This virus seems to be very good at getting politicians, doesn’t it?
I hope it doesn’t get BoJo. He is easily the best leader we’ve had in decades, despite the media criticism.
Nadine is not Trump’s type. He likes them young and slender as dumb as dog doo-doo.
So in the mother of all fuck ups, Rudy Gorbet of the Utah Jazz made a point of touching every microphone in the room after a game on Monday to mock fear of covid-19. You guessed it, he tested positive tonight and forced the NBA to cancel all games for the foreseeable future.
Pride goes before the fall. All those young people who insist on going for Spring Breaks will also be recipients of the Darwin Award. They’ll end up killing a lot of people by either infecting others or causing the health system to be overwhelmed.
Yep. I’ve met college friends in Vegas for the Pac 12 tournament for 15 years. It’s great because people can get to it easily from all over the country. I cancelled Monday, at which point the consensus was to wait and go next year. Even if you’re young and not likely to die, the same can’t be said for the person you pass it to.
Young people capitalize on cheap coronavirus flights: ‘If I die, I die’
If coronavirus gets really dangerous, “I might as well be somewhere having fun,” one California college student said. link to nbcnews.com
He was breathing heavily? Has he been tested?
Maybe it was a huge mistake to make a live broadcast… Come to think of it, what live broadcast has ever turned out well in the last 6 months?
Well, making the news today (Thursday) some minister from Brazil who tested positive for Covid-19 was seen in the White House a while ago, shaking hands and pressing the flesh…
Mommy, make it stop! Can’t we just throw a couple hundred billion more on the AGW bonfire and make it go away?
The upside to Trump being crazy, is that while he is more likely to claim it’s just the flu, he is also more likely than “reasonable” European heads of state to lock the whole population into their apartments, and fog the whole continent on a continuous basis.
Wonder if his ambiguity wrt goods, is due to classified briefings by researchers, finding viruses still active in packages coming in all the way from overseas…
Doesn’t seem to apply to goods. Only the people transporting them.
“And these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo but various other things AS WE GET APPROVAL ” Trump said. “Anything coming from Europe to the United States is WHAT WE ARE DISCUSSING .”
So not immediate but under consideration.
Goods can go into 9 days quarantine to be safe. What I do with the non-perishable parts of delivered groceries. Just leave alone for a while.
Precisely what would you do if a deadly virus was in other countries, and they were NOT screening to prevent it from spreading?
Scott Adams calls this a halfpinion – when you don’t provide an alternative when someone tries to do something about an extant problem.
Is the US screening anyone leaving the US? We’re fast reaching the point where travel restrictions will become irrelevant. Trump has bolloxed things up as well as any Democrat would/could have.
Sorry bud, but scores are kept in every game.
There are people who know, but now everything depends on Jared.
He was probably more rattled by Tom Hanks and wife getting the virus. He now realizes that being “up there” does not protect one from getting it 😉
This is one enemy Trump can not:
Next week: he’ll call his “good friend” President Xi to roll back the trade tariffs in exchange for medical supplies.
Hard to tell if he was more worried about the virus or the economy.
Well I guess over the next few weeks you can ask that very question of just about anyone you see. This is going to hurt.
I’ll take a different view here, and it won’t fit with many.
Firstly his presentation was one of confidence. You guys don’t know the kind of show we have to put up with here in Europe.
Stressed, I didn’t see that, I saw someone making moves that he didn’t think he would have to make.
The travel ban makes sense if it means travellers from, not just flights. This can be tracked. Europe has an outbreak starting that it is not containing. As for sympathy with Italy, Italy has restricted travel in own country, closed all businesses, a travel ban from it is least of its concerns.
Application to goods. This one is heavy, it can be something we don’t know about the virus, it can be to renegotiate trade flows as economies are forecast to readjust, or other.
Combined they look like sealing out what is forecast to be a very troublesome future reality in Europe.
UK gets spared, the reasons for this are obvious to me, both in terms of coordination and the benefit of having a doorway to Europe.
The US might equally apply similar restrictions to Canada, Mexico, or any other country or region. Kuwait just imposed a two week total self quarantine, no one is complaining.
US cases might well be lower than the pessimistic view, even if they are not, it is possible that the containment measures planned have no room for extra unknown variables.
So, personally if I were in the US, I would be grateful that someone was taking command of the circumstance this way, and I would be behind that effort. The US has good enough organisation, good enough sentiment and reason within society, to make this direction a good choice.
…and business interests and so forth, sure – that is what managers do, whether it is own business or national business. Managers are not always liked, and very rarely please everyone.
But fire away anyone , I’m just someone outside of all of this and so won’t take offence because I am not close to the local political bickering.
I agree this was probably Trump’s finest moment so far. The upside to his hipshooting ways, is that just like he can downplay things despite all evidence to the contrary, he can also act faster than more consensus dependent managers if he does decide to go all in. He’s reflexively a pedal to the metal guy, regardless of where he’s heading.
Without sufficient testing to get a handle on the problem, all “the best doctors and researchers in the world,” are still flying blind, though. Researchers need data to base their research on.
As for politics, one upside to Trump generally being on “their side”, is that health insurers no doubt had a harder time refusing concessions asked of them when coming from him, than if the request had come from someone who have spent their entire career vilifying them.
I’m still wondering what about the uninsured. Will testing facilities be reimbursed for testing them? And again, what about “illegals?” In both cases, the overall cost to the system of testing them, versus having them run around contagious and infecting others, and then take up ICU facilities when they go critical, is probably a clear win. But someone still has to bear the cost of testing.
You’re right about testing. Testing in the US is abysmal. They should be testing everyone with symptoms, but, at least here in Idaho, if you have symptoms they assume it’s the flu. No testing, no household quarantine. We’re f’d.
Yes, the testing is a big fail. I’m not going to point at anyone directly for that because I don’t know the story behind it, and for sure there is a story behind it.
In Spain and Italy tests are already limited, there are complaints that tests are being refused to people with symptoms that don’t meet contact criteria. So the testing system is already overburdened here. I read in Spain private tests are costing up to 300 dollars. I don’t think private sector are up to mass testing for now, it is in insurers interest to test. I think the impetus in Europe will be towards mass free testing, but how long it takes for them to get their act together is another question. Leadership is dismal, Merkel suggests 70% infection and asks for solidarity , I don’t have much solidarity for that . Der Leyden poses with Michel and knocks isolation by US while keeping open in Europe as example, “we are EU” style. Just stupid as isolation and barriers to transmission are what is needed. Local CDC in Spain ” By no means will we be like Italy” as cases double, as they go up over 500 a day. It’s pathetic, or worse it is allowing Europe to get to the state that nations are overwhelmed and an EU response sought…except they don’t have one, only money and big ideas. No, here we are really on our own with whatever goodwill local people have and whatever local authorities can manage. Fortunately “common people” are generally reasonable enough in Europe.
In Spain the whole cabinet and royalty are being tested due to cases amongst them, regional parliaments closed for same reason, in Madrid all non essential government employees are relieved from duty. Doctors leave is cancelled. A lot of politicians have caught the virus. Judges are discussing their approach in terms of court activity. Markets tanking day after day. Reality settling in … more subdued atmosphere, but not terrible either for most people.
… or the election.
I think the European flight ban is too late. It’s already rife in America in my opinion, just not in the figures yet. He should be concentrating on limiting travel within the USA.
The virus is absolutely rampant in the U.S.
The full scale is unknown because of the lack of testing and containment. It’s game over – most people will get it at some point now.