More Thoughts On The Flu, Coronavirus & Bernie Sanders

Here are some numbers on influenza I thought you might find interesting{my highlights}:

"Influenza is a highly infectious disease that usually strikes during the winter season. Globally, it causes an estimated one billion cases of influenza, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 deaths per year. A person can get the virus simply by being near an infected person that coughs, sneezes or talks, or by touching something with the virus on it."  

Link: CDC:  "Disease Burden of Influenza."

One in eight of us will get the flu {world population of roughly eight Billion}.  I keep hearing the flu has a mortality rate of 1.4%.  I can't verify that but I'm going to assume that's a number for industrialized nations.  My math shows mortality levels much higher worldwide assuming the global case numbers are close to accurate.  This means higher likely mortality in less developed regions of the world.  Soooooo.......influenza kills each year roughly the same amount of people killed in our Civil War.  Yet the world does not come to a standstill because of the flu.

Another way to view this is that the flu kills more people each year than auto accidents{36,560 fatalities in 2018}.  People still get in cars even though around 11 people are killed for every 100,000  people driving.

On to the coronavirus:

My guess is it's been around longer than we think but masquerading as the flu.

Infection and mortality levels are likely to rise and provide headline fodder over the coming weeks.  We're going to find a lot more cases here at home now that we have better testing.  Also the disease doesn't seem to have made it to Africa yet.  

The untold story is how quickly science has globally sprung into action trying to identify, treat and ultimately develop a vaccine.  Remember  my belief that one of the transforming changes in modern society is the exponential advances in knowledge.  I'll have more to say on this at a later date.

Bernie Sanders may ultimately get the Democratic nomination but the party elites are uniting to do their best to stop him as Buttigieg, Steyer and now Klobuchar have now dropped out of the race.  Reports are saying that Buttigieg and Klobuchar either have or will soon endorse Joe Biden.  The Democrats seem to have learned the lesson the Republicans didn't until it was too late back in 2016.  Can't help but think that's part of the reason that stocks are rallying today, besides being terribly oversold.

Finally all of corporate America is going to get a hall pass this year in terms of earnings.  Everything is going to get blamed on the coronavirus.  Expect bad news out of a lot of companies over the next few months.  Very high probability that stocks are discounting a large piece of this already.

Back later in the week.