Coronavirus

Future potential spread of the coronavirus is impacting world trade and threatens a global economic recession and inflection point. For the first time, Illness is now a major driving force. We first reported this virus way back in 2010 and regularly since July 2015 as a predictable surprise: a known unknown to most. It is not a Black Swan; it was foreseen! Forewarned is forearmed and forearmed is protection against unpleasant possibilities and this inflection point will most likely change everyone's future profoundly.

Here are some actions you could take offered by and our friends at WavePoint and BCG and McKinsey.

Companies are asking people to work from home (we have always worked from our homes since 2003). We think the latter will become a long-term and rapidly growing trend as people reduce traveling time, buy more online, and increasingly recognize the benefits to their health of staying home. More emerging, potential behavioral trends here. Begin regularly evaluating predictable surprises, be prepared and act in time, while others lose their shirt through inattention to the future.

• [New] Ambitious action to tackle climate change could create millions of extra jobs, aiding Europe's economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• [New] Aside from the EU, Serbia's other main economic partners have felt the impact of the Covid-19 crisis and exhibit a negative economic outlook for 2020, with modest positive signs in 2021.
• [New] Global oil demand will fall deeper in 2020 than was previously predicted, due to the coronavirus pandemic, and recovery being slower than expected next year.
• [New] Companies could cut capex by 15% -30% in 2020 to mitigate cash burn caused by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
• [New] Behavioural changes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will permanently reduce global energy demand over pre-pandemic scenarios for every year to 2050 by between 6-8%.
• [New] More recently, in the first semester of 2020, COVID-19-related disruptions to the local markets and trade, already hampered by the lingering impact of the prolonged conflict, provided further support, as did the lower imports due to the border screening implemented by the Government of Uganda.
• [New] The coronavirus pandemic will cause economic output in developing Asia to shrink for the first time in nearly six decades in 2020 before it bounces back next year.
• [New] In spite of efforts to meet the zero hunger challenge, global hunger has been increasing even before the coronavirus pandemic, the United Nations has warned, putting its Zero Hunger 2030 target in doubt.
• [New] The number of Covid-19-related deaths globally could rise by almost two million by the end of the year with some 30,000 daily deaths worldwide in December alone.
• [New] The Asia-Pacific region is home to more than half of the world's undernourished people, and with the impacts of COVID-19, the number of hungry people in Southern Asia could rise by nearly a third to 330 million in the next ten years.
• [New] The economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could result in a fall in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry by at least 4-11% in 2020.
• [New] Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Thin Film and Printed Batteries estimated at US$ 624.6 Million in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$ 2.5 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 21.6% over the analysis period 2020-2027.
• [New] China's steel exports have been subject to 15 new anti-dumping investigations in the first nine months of the year, more than all of last year, as experts warn that the US-China trade war and the coronavirus pandemic have hastened a trend towards global protectionism.
• [New] Britain's economic recovery from the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic has gathered pace, data showed on Friday, but government borrowing rose past the 2 trillion-pound ($2.6 trillion) mark and fears of future job losses are mounting.
• [New] India will have recorded the highest number of Covid-19 deaths at the end of 2020 - it currently ranks third - and that the United States will rank second.
• Recognising that there remains a high level of uncertainty around the financial challenges higher education providers will face in 2020 to 2021, the UK recently announced the higher education restructuring regime to support providers who are at risk of market exit because of coronavirus (COVID-19).
• The Greek economy is expected to shrink 9% in 2020 due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown measures that have severely affected international travel.
• SurfaceWise2 is approved by the EPA as the first ever long lasting cleaning product to help fight the spread of the novel coronavirus and it will be applied to American's entire aircraft fleet in the coming months.
• Tonix expects small animal and non-human primate data from safety studies of TNX-1800 in COVID-19 models to measure safety and the immune response to the SARS-COV-2 Spike protein in the fourth quarter of 2020.
• Moody's downgraded its 2020 economic growth forecast for the Philippines to -7% from its previous estimate of -4.5% because of the worse-than-expected impact of the COVID-19 health crisis.
• By early May, 2020, mortality levels from COVID-19 were considerably below predicted overestimations, a result which the public attributed to successful mitigating measures to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
• CBO projects a US federal budget deficit of $3.3 trillion in 2020, more than triple the shortfall recorded in 2019, mostly because of the economic disruption caused by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and the enactment of legislation in response.
• France's champagne makers reached a last-minute agreement to reduce the amount of grapes they will harvest in 2020 as they try to recover from a collapse in sales caused by the coronavirus crisis.

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Last updated: 20 September 2020