Seattle’s Morning Rush Hour Gridlock Vanishes
KOMO News reports Seattle’s Morning Rush Hour Gridlock Vanishes.
- It was an estimated 35 minute drive from Everett to Bellevue along I-5 and I-405 — a drive that WSDOT says normally is 62 minutes.
- Seattle-bound drivers from Everett also found freeway speeds all the way in with an estimated 36 minute commute over the 27-mile drive. The average is 67 minutes.
Traffic remains quite light around Seattle. Check out the @wsdot_traffic travel times — from 7:55 a.m.! pic.twitter.com/r5fFafrDrl
— KOMO News (@komonews) March 5, 2020
American Airlines Bonds Plunging
When overconfidence becomes indefensible…#NoSkidMarks https://t.co/58AT7TXDiG
— Peter Atwater (@Peter_Atwater) March 6, 2020
50% Change in 10-Year Yield in Two Weeks
Will we only appreciate history when it’s slapped us on the ass as we walk out the door. https://t.co/eO1OCWE3Bo
— Danielle DiMartino Booth (@DiMartinoBooth) March 6, 2020
14th Death in Seattle
https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1236007530935005184
Trump Says Pence and Corona Czar Doing Fantastic Job
It is FAKE NEWS that @HHSGov @SecAzar is “sidelined” from the great job he is doing on the CoronaVirus Task Force. He has the total confidence of the @VP and myself, and is doing a fantastic job, as the numbers would indicate!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2020
How? Where? At What? Suppressing News?
US Response to Date
https://twitter.com/evdefender/status/1235728653138497536
Clearly a fantastic job, or you don’t understand fantastic. And I can prove it.
17 Tested in Missouri
“Nearly 17 people have been tested” https://t.co/pWUsWjv3XZ
— Charley Grant (@CGrantWSJ) March 6, 2020
See!
I repeat: That’s clearly a fantastic job, or you don’t understand fantastic.
More Testing Success Stories
https://twitter.com/kr3at/status/1236010067750801411
With so much success I struggle to understand why the DOW is not up 2000 points.
More Tweets if the Day
Also consider Coronavirus Update and Tweets of the Day for Thursday.
Very Deflationary Outcome Coming
A Very Deflationary Outcome Has Begun.
Blame the Fed. Click on the link for details.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
This virus is not a problem if you are generally healthy, and not old and feeble or in a nursing home, and so why are Mish’s followers so concerned about it?……Ohhhh….
Classy moves of the day in crisis management on the teevee…..
Pence announces to the world about the confirmed cases on the SF cruise ship before the people on the ship are told…
Trump says they should be held on the ship indefinitely because if they let them back on land, it’ll “make our numbers look bad”…
On the boob tube.
Obama waited for a 1000 Americans to die , with 20,000 in the hospital before he raised a finger to stop this. Over 6 months! A little over 300 cases for the Corona
Virus & 15 deaths! if you have white man sanitation our mortality rate is less than one percent! I know this is racist! Screw the fake news! Also Trump has moved 23% of the supply chain back to the USA! Thank God! 24,000 flu deaths a year in the USA!
During the last bear market, the FTC banned short selling to reduce selling pressure. This time around I expect that will be on of the first actions taken to calm markets. If that doesn’t work, then the FTC could close the market for a couple months until the virus passes. A group of banks tried to stop the market crash in 1929 by purchasing stocks, and it didn’t work. Buying futures when the market is closed is not a cure-all. There is not enough money for the FED to purchase all the highest rated corporate bonds, and the social justice warriors would cry corruption.
I might just tool on over to Seattle (a five+ hour drive) to check out those freeways. They’re normally AWFUL. I might be even able to cruise at the speed limit! Crazy. I’ll feel like Charleston Heston in Omega Man! Now I just need a hot mustang.
Even if COVID-19 were “just like the flu” (humor me), wouldn’t COVID-19 + the flu together do double the damage as the flu alone — which kills tens of thousands every year in the US?
In a population of 310+ MILLION, the flu kills about 50k per year. Let’s say this Covid-2019 kills 8x that. That is still less than 500k. This is about what the flu use to kill before the flu vaccine. This isn’t the end of humanity or the economy.
Unchecked the deaths in the USA alone could be well into 7 figures. This link goes through the comparisons.
Depends on the rate of infection. Not sure what the R is at the moment but at least R2.5 is the estimate. Then the mortality rate is also different WHO has it at 3.4% and flu at 0.1% so could be minimum of 2,000,000 deaths
True, though the bulk of economic damage will not be from the deaths, but from all of the actions, sensible and otherwise, taken to avoid contracting this thing.
Or actually won’t the bulk of economic damage be in the secondary effect of deflation. This virus may be wimpy as far as plagues go, but one hell of a bubble popper.
Exactly…. and that’s in a 1st world country with cutting edge health care, R&D, and technology. Now imagine what will happen in India and some other nations where people are PACKED together 24/7, where most of them come from rural areas, have little or no education, little or no trust of “medicine”, and believe in more natural ways of treating illness. All we can do now is keep score.
“a 1st world country with cutting edge health care, R&D, and technology.”
And where you can buy the Brooklyn Bridge for $50…
Certain demographics (60 and over with underlying problems) have a 20% fatality rate.
Wildbull – you should be able to edit your comment. If I was sure what you meant to say I would do it myself.
Just click on the three dots, then edit.
Understood, however do we know the real number of people infected? If there are plenty of asymptomatic people around, won’t that number be skewed?
“Do we know the real number of people infected?” In the US the answer is no, because we don’t want to know. So far there’s only been 2000 testings with 10% testing positive. Snowflakes can’t take bad news, so might as well shove everything under the bed.
My understanding is that figure of 3.4% is not based on cases in US.
We know testing isn’t up to snuff and that there are more cases. That will bring the death rate down significantly.
Math is hard (if you’re a reporter). Highlights of the news this week included the story that Bloomberg could have used all that $700 million ad spend on giving everyone in the United States a million dollars… Um, not quite.
Late last year we all got sick with the flu, except for my son, who showed no symptoms whatsover. During this latest pandemic, this ‘anomaly’ was explained that people can get the illness without having any symptoms.
I later found out that prior to COVID-19 the flu season was considered to be a pretty bad one already.
As other stories have noticed, the virus could have been around the Seattle area for over 6 weeks without being detected.
“Clearly a fantastic job, or you don’t understand fantastic. And I can prove it.”
When trump says ‘fantastic’, he means ‘pure fantasy’ and when he says ‘unbelievable’ it means what he’s describing is a lie. trumplings love being lied to, so these are dogwhistles for them.
Is everyone getting ads for masks on this page or just me?
Good News if So
Masks are available
Typically dynamic advertising, as you are experiencing, is generated from your logged search history, cookies in your browser, etc..
My take on this is that TPTB are going to let the virus rip through the population. These people are not so stupid that they think they are doing much to prevent the spread. Hand washing is not going to stop it. Local quarantines are not going to stop it. It does not appear to be stoppable in any case. So, it seems to me that they are going to get it over with, instead of dragging it out over many months or several years.
After everyone gets it that’s going to, things will return to normal rather quickly. The future of COVID19 will be a case of the sniffles in children. Since everyone will have had it at a young age, there will be very few deaths.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. – Hanlon’s razor.
Not sure that it is malice, maybe just ripping off the bandaid. Or, they are too timid to take the drastic measures necessary to contain it, if it is containable. There is action at the state and local level, but at the national level, nothing they do makes sense. Our local hospital as created an isolation wing and claim to be ready, though there are no cases here yet.
You can get it more than once I think.
Yes, I’ve seen it listed in news that some patients have had it twice.
Fort Worth TX. Pop. 600,000.
30% get infected= 270,000
5% of those require ICU level critical care = 13,500 beds needed for three weeks per patient.
Our ICU utilisation is running about 80% normally.
Many hard triage decision will have to be made.
It will be far better to spread out the infections to reduce the inevitable tragedies.
Letting the virus run wild will produce very poor optics for someone!
A potential problem is the possibility that the immune system’s response to a second infection may be so extreme that it is more deadly than the virus. We have no firm data on this yet, but we should soon know, as reinfections are already occurring in China.
Don’t worry guys!!! Boston Fed chief is now calling for “We should allow the central bank to purchase a broader range of securities or assets… Alternatively, the Federal Reserve could consider a facility that could buy a broader set of assets.”
What rate cuts won’t fix, direct money printing and buying ETFs ala the Japanese will do.
Then again this virus is fatal to the Ok Boomer generation. What? You think draining the swamp won’t come with a cost? By end of the year, this country might actually be great again, and even Social Security might be flush with surpluses. Remember, if you owe people money and if the later goes away, the liability goes too.
“We should allow the central bank to purchase a broader range of securities or assets..
…
Yellen asked for this a few years ago. Article 14 of Federal Reserve Act specifies what FR can purchase. Will need Congress to amend.
Congress will say yes of course. Their 401Ks are at stake after all.
Heck, next they’ll pass an act asking for preferential IPO shares.
Bacon at 50 dollars is coming.
I don’t believe my lyin’ eyes.
My screen says 30yr yield down 35 bps.
No way that doesn’t blow up some folks.
This weekend, they’ll probably have to bail out a hedge fund somewhere.
I see a 27 basis points loss with the 30@1.28. Fed funds window rate is 1.50-1.75. How does that work?
“Nearly 17 people have been tested.”
Like 16 and one-half?
We are living “Idiocracy” in real-time. Mike Judge was a prophet.
Sad and apparently true.
You remember the scene where they showed the money being exchanged? Each bill was a $10,000,000 note.
The bad news on SARS-CoV-2 in the US will keep coming every day this weekend. Given their track record, I think odds are good the Fed and US Govt. will hatch some sort of financial rescue plan to announce Sunday evening or Monday morning. Let’s hope they do a better job of communicating their plans on how the US will manage this outbreak rather than simply handing out money and repeating the phrase “The risk is low” as if it were “Brwando’s got electrolytes.”
Let’s all head down to Mara Lago for the weekend and see if we can work something out to save the billionaires.
Hmm, Mara-Lardo, yeah that’s better
Well duh the answer is 10. Didn’t you have common core math?
No, that’s wrong.
10 was “a bit more than 9” , and here
the number is closer to 20, so that makes it 15.
2+2=5, for very large values of 2.
Everybody everywhere heads to the bomb shelter for a few days / weeks.
Then what?
People will venture out … carefully … still don’t see how demand doesn’t crater in the near / mid term. A cure / vaccine will do wonders for confidence. How long till that occurs?
No venturing out
They will all die or crawl out of the bomb shelter
there eating chips and cookies, obesity will go to 50%
Stupid me all i bought was beef stew and chili. Oh, and 400lbs of dry dog food.
You do have a dog, right ?
Scared of the world outside you should go explore
Pull all the shades and wander the great indoors
The great indoors
Lamplight makes the shadows play
And posters take the walls away
The TV is your window pane
The view wont let you down
So put your faith in a late night show
I bet you didn’t even know
Depends on how far out you go
The channel numbers change
Scared of the world outside you should go explore
Pull all the shades and wander the great indoors
Though lately I cant blame you
I have seen the world
And sometimes wish your room had room for two
So go unlock the door
And find what you are here for
Leave the great indoors
Please leave the great indoors
–John Clayton Mayer