February 20, 2020
Shocking Spike In COVID-19 Cases Puts Beijing On High Alert; Officials Weigh "Wuhan-Level" Lockdown
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Update (1250ET): Less than an hour ago, we mentioned that Beijing's heavy-handed virus-fighting measures had become the subject of an intense "public debate" about whether they were doing more harm than good.
Well, according to an unconfirmed report from the Epoch Times' Jennifer Zeng, party officials in Beijing are upgrading its "epidemic prevention" status to "Wuhan-level" - meaning a complete lockdown where residents aren't allowed to leave their homes without specific permission.
Another tweet sent earlier in the day reported new restrictions being imposed at a Beijing apartment complex.
How much longer can the party keep this up before it damages public confidence to a degree that can't be repaired.
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Update (1200ET): In what appears to be yet another consequence of Beijing's rushed push to get all of China "back to work" nearly two weeks ago, the Global Times, a Chinese tabloid that also publishes in English.
A hospital in Central Beijing has reported 36 novel coronavirus cases as of Thursday, a sharp increase in the number of cases reported in the capital city. The new cases bring Beijing's total to 45, stoking fears that the outbreak could accelerate.
Among the infected at Fuxing Hospital in Beijing's Xicheng district were eight medical workers, nine cleaning staff and 19 patients, along with members of their families.
These confirmations follow reports that Beijing officials quarantined whole office buildings following after some employees were suspected of having the virus.
"Considering 36 confirmed cases were found in Fuxing Hospital, it is more about one case of multiple infections rather than an epidemic of the whole area," Wang Guangfa, director of the department of respiratory and critical care medicine at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times on Thursday.
"This coronavirus issue is big. It will effect a lot of companies, and I think the market's have underestimated what a big supply-side shock this is," said Mohammad El-Erian, Bill Gross's former No. 2 man at PIMCO and a widely watched economist who works now with PIMCO parent Allianz.
Peking University People's Hospital, another major hospital in Beijing, confirmed that it had received three patients carrying the virus earlier this week on Feb. 17. Already, a total of 164 medical workers at the hospital have been placed under close medical observation after they had "close contact" with the patients - something that seems almost unavoidable for nurses and doctors.
A total of 164 people including medical staff at People's Hospital who have had close contact with the patients have been put under close The hospital said it had conducted coronavirus tests on 251 personnel, and so far, they've all been negative.
In other news, another analyst has told the GT that Apple's iPhone sales in China will shrink 40% to 50% in the near term after the company closed all its retail stores in the country earlier this month. Those stores have only just started to reopen.
Liang Zhenpeng, a senior industry expert, told the Global Times on Thursday the COVID-19 outbreak has dealt a heavy blow to the sales of all mobile phone suppliers in China, including Apple.
"The iPhone's sales in the first quarter of this year are likely to be less than half of the same quarter in 2019," he said. "Mobile phone sales, both online or offline, are very difficult during this period, because the supply chains can hardly be normalized."
Apple CEO Tim Cook said on his Sina Weibo account, China's Twitter-like social media, on Thursday the company welcomes back employees and customers and is looking to work closely with their manufacturing partners to get everything back on track.
We suspect this is what triggered the market plunge over the last 30 minutes.
Circling back to Beijing, the municipal officials said that all hospitals in Beijing should "accelerate hospitalization of patients and try their best to diagnose suspected cases to treat the infected patients at the earliest time."
So far, the confirmed cases in the city have been scattered around 15 of its 16 districts.
The hysteria surrounding the outbreak across China has actually sparked an interesting public debate - something you don't see much in China - about whether all of the heavy-handed government measures - the quarantines and lockdowns and roadblocks - and the work stoppages are really necessary.
Some even contend that by impoverishing regular Chinese people via work stoppages that damage the economy, the government might be doing more harm to the population than the virus has, according to the New York Times.
With hundreds of millions of people in China now essentially living in isolation and its economy nearly at a standstill, experts in the country are increasingly arguing that Beijing’s efforts to fight the coronavirus are hurting people’s lives and livelihoods while doing little to the stop the virus’s spread.
If the country becomes poorer because of emergency health measures, they say, that drop might hurt public health more than the virus itself.
The debate - including questions about whether mandatory 14-day quarantines, roadblocks and checkpoints are really necessary in areas where there have been few cases - is unusual in a country where dissent is usually censored.
It comes as China reported a significant decrease in new coronavirus infections on Thursday, as health officials changed the way they counted confirmed cases for the second time in over a week.
Of course, President Xi and China's senior economic officials claim that there won't be any economic pullback, since Beijing is obviously winning the 'People's War'.
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http://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coronavirus-deaths-outside-china-surge-overnight-explosion-new-cases-suggests-outbreak
Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months
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