End in Sight
I have been tracking the virus around the world every day. After the first sharp crash in the markets, the speed of the spread of the virus is the key to the bear market rebound into the summer when heat and humidity will also work against the virus.
I originally estimated the peak of daily cases for Europe’s epicenter was around March 21. That was the actual peak in daily infections. But rates held up into a second lower peak and now the moving average of momentum actually peaked 3 days later around March 24. The original projection was to hit the end of the acceleration phase of growth at 90% around April 1. This new update clearly now confirms the deceleration and would suggest April 7 is the end of the acceleration phase.
Chart: Italy Virus S-Curve Now Projects Marked Slowdown Around April 7
Spain, France and Germany are close behind and look to be hitting that 50% point in latter March and should be hitting that marked slowing at 90% between April 13 and 15, just a week after Italy. And that’s when Andy Pancholi and I are predicting a bottom to this first crash, most likely around mid-April!
That’s when I think the world will get that this isn’t going to be as bad as most of the “experts” predicted. They even converted the Donald to their new projection of 100,000 – 240,000 deaths in the months ahead – if we do everything right. That would see a few million infections which I simply do not see.
We could see much higher levels as Dr. Fauci reminds that this virus can come back with a vengeance in colder weather starting around… election time. But we’ll see when the time comes.
The U.S. is still the wild card as it has not clearly hit this 50% point of greater predictability and deceleration of growth. However, I think the U.S is close as well and its epicenter New York and New Jersey look to be only about 3 weeks behind Italy. Trump’s team is projecting that the rest of the country follows New York in acceleration and intensity. That is not realistic. New York is in one of the coldest regions and its is by far the most-dense city downtown – as is much of the northeast and Chicago/Detroit.
Italy ends this somewhere around 140,000 infections and 18,000 to 20,000 deaths with a death rate rising to around 13%. Their death rate is over 5 times ours which offsets the fact that their population is about 20% of ours.
I found a new site that is using an approach similar to our S-Curve, but it focuses only on deaths and death rates. The new site is projecting a higher number of deaths than I would, so I want to investigate that and get back to you. I would assume the new site is seeing accelerating numbers of deaths as a percentage of cases, which has happened in Italy as deaths lag cases a bit and the system gets overwhelmed. Even the new site projects a peak of 16,000 deaths for New York and 96,000 for the U.S. – below the official estimates of 100,000 to 240,000.
To summarize, we may be back to work, like China today, in many places by sometime in May – not well into the summer as most are assuming.
