Flat stats hide a rapidly changing market
If you look at the monthly stats, it would seem that all is well in real estate in Victoria. Sales are down a paltry 5% over this time last year, more than compensated by a 15% drop in new listings, and there are 8% fewer properties on the market. The median sales price of a detached property jumped by $45,000 over last month, and the detached average is $986,602, which is an all time record. To. The. Stars.
All that is credit to the strength of the upswing we were experiencing up until this virus situation blindsided the market. Low rates and a waning of the effects of the stress test were bringing buyers back to the market, and activity in certain market segments was red hot just last month.
However the monthly numbers are mostly looking in the rear view mirror. The market was a tear until the middle of the month, with sales well above the year-ago levels and seemingly defying the crash in the equity markets. In the end though no market is immune to this kind of black swan event and sales have trended downwards (note charts below are for Greater Victoria only, not the wider VREB trading area). It will be very interesting to see what the floor of activity is and whether that is enough to take care of those that need to sell and keep the market mostly functioning.
In my article a couple eternities ago (i.e. two weeks), I compared the virus impacts on the Victoria market to the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. I did that not because the situations are the same or that I necessarily expect the magnitude of the impacts on prices to be similar. The differences are vast and could be discussed ad infinitum both in how they may make this crisis worse as well as how they may make it better than the last one. I compared them because they are both demand shocks and led to a jump in unemployment. The long term fundamentals of the market haven’t changed but in the short and medium term we will see the market become quite disrupted and unstable.
As usual, the seasonally adjusted sales tell the story, with all the gains from our recent rally now entirely given up, despite the fact that most of the market impact hasn’t even been reflected in the monthly data. Remember that last March and April were already quite weak months for sales historically speaking. If the lockdown continues through April (there’s a “zero percent” chance it won’t according to our health minister) we are going to see an unprecedented low number of sales.
What about inventory?
The dip in new listings and a number of listings being cancelled means inventory resumed its decline after a brief uptick in February.
As you can see, compared to the recent peak in 2012 when prices were drifting downwards at a couple percent a year, inventory is still very low. Also looking back at the financial crisis, at that time we actually had sales take a dive and inventory take a hard turn upwards a full year before the financial crisis really started hitting Wall Street. This time is different, with the market strengthening before the shock instead of weakening.
My Take
Low inventory is normally protective of prices. However I believe prices can also decline with low inventory if the market is locked up. You won’t necessarily see all of it in the statistics though for a few reasons:
- When sales are low, medians and averages become very unreliable. They are highly variable at the best of times, and with fewer sales they will become even more so.
- Changes in the sales mix (more higher or lower end properties selling than normal) can distort prices in either direction more easily with fewer sales.
- Sellers drop, but many of those are forced to sell and some will make deals substantially below normal market value. We are already starting to see this in the market.
In a time like this, it’s all about the individual deal.
Forget the statistics!
An ironic statement perhaps coming from someone that spends as much time on statistics as I do, but it’s true. If you’re still in a position to buy a property, get your ducks in a row and watch those individual listings like a hawk. More importantly be prepared to act with bold offers that provide certainty to a nervous seller. I’m never in support of unconditional offers regardless of market conditions but you can take steps to make your offer stronger (quick close, subject to inspection only, big deposit, etc). Do your research, get prepared, consult your Realtor if you like (psst: I don’t do sales but I can refer a good one).
I don’t say this because I’m trying to pump the market or recommend a purchase. Sales numbers and prices being up or down don’t affect me in any way. Nor am I calling a bottom here or have special knowledge about how bad this downturn will be, how long it will last, or what deals will materialize in the future. What I do know is that buying anything during a big market shock is scary and feels risky as you’re doing it. If it didn’t then there would be no opportunity, so when fear is high it’s a clue to start paying attention. This is a time to revisit your risk assessment for buying and ensure you are clear on what you want and be ready to act on it. If you don’t have a PCS account to watch individual sales prices in your sub-market of interest (free from any Realtor), get one here.
What do you think? Will this be a nothingburger for prices, a relatively quick seesaw market reaction like 2008 (~14 months for price recovery), or a bigger hit to the market?
Monday numbers: https://househuntvictoria.ca/2020/04/06/april-6-market-update/
Also, given where we are, what event(s) could cause additional significant stock market drops in the next 1-3 months?
Markets up significantly again today, of course still way down from February (S&P 500 is down about 23%). I’m curious what the market timers like Grant are expecting at this point. Some on here were expecting a 50% drop.
No savvy moves from me, I’ve never sold anything and I buy more every chance I get regardless of what the market is doing.
I assume you meant to write something else. I cannot imagine Sweden banning deaths on the weekend or what that would have looked like
It’s strange that BC has such low infection rates so far. You would think Vancouver would have imported thousands of super spreaders from Wuhan because of the high population of Chinese immigrants and the travel back and forth. We have pretty much the same measures as everywhere else in Canada too so why the heck are the numbers low (for now).
FYI: Iceland tests anyone for coronavirus, shows significant amount (50%) are asymptomatic
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2020/04/iceland-tests-anyone-for-coronavirus-shows-significant-amount-are-asymptomatic.html
The issue is not about those asymptomatic ones (as they don’t need medicare, just part of the herd), but about the people who are in contact with them and who could get very sick and even die.
Exam is complete non-sense put together by a bunch of people that have never visited a construction site. People will get up to 5 questions on chimney code yet when was the last new house you saw being built with a chimney?
Also, how come you need an exam to build your own home but licenced builders don’t have to write an exam?
I could list another 25 points. The entire thing is a joke.
76 deaths today.
They also are allowing deaths on the weekend now.
In 1892, the ruling class of Hamburg ignored scientists and delayed their response to the city’s cholera outbreak by weeks out of concern for the economy.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1988/06/30/politics-of-a-plague/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Saturday%20Longread%20Politics%20of%20a%20Plague&utm_content=Saturday%20Longread%20Politics%20of%20a%20Plague+CID_0918bc8eea80658bb4fc78e656c23f3b&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=Keep%20Reading
Marko. Thanks for the heads up.
1) the BC owner builder exam is necessary for anyone who wants to start getting into the construction work and build their own home.
2) why there is a cost( barrier) is beyond my understanding( $425). BC housing is supposed to ease barriers not imposing a fee on the exam.
3)perhaps it is a good opportunity who want to write the exam now.( easy to pass with open book exam)
The Swedish approach is likely to backfire badly – and soon.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/06/sweden-drafts-new-legislation-allow-extraordinary-steps-combat/
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association might have an issue with (mandatory) temperature check screenings.
Just found out because all the testing centers are closed BC Housing has made the BC Owner Builder Exam online and open book with 5 days to complete.
The virus exposing how dumb the exam is in the first place.
“Screen” ie ask questions
Not even a simple temperature check.
That’s not a cost of flattening the curve, rather a cost of not flattening it enough. Elective procedures have been delayed in anticipation of a surge in Covid hospitalizations. If we knew the cases would be spread out over a long enough period, freeing up that many spaces would not be necessary.
B.C. Ferries to screen passengers for COVID-19 as new regulations announced
https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/b-c-ferries-to-screen-passengers-for-covid-19-as-new-regulations-announced-1.24113151
RE: The Swedish Approach
Our focus has been to flatten the curve but that does not necessarily mean less deaths overall than Sweden (calculated on deaths per million) but rather spread over a longer period of time. The object of flattening the curve is to make sure that the hospital system is not totally overwhelmed (hence producing a number of otherwise avoidable deaths). While Sweden has seen a faster spread of the virus (and hence more deaths) there is nothing to suggest that their hospital system has been overwhelmed at this point.
The simple fact is that this virus will spread through the whole herd long before we can get a vaccine (if ever). Swedden has taken steps to try to protect its seniors (and hence flatten the curve for hospitalizations.). One has to also remeber that there are also hidden costs to the health care system if one flattens the curve over too many months. To some extent our hospital system has been semi paralyzed with delaying with other serious matters such as diagnostics for heart and cancer treatment .
There will be deaths from delay, how many is the unanswerable question.
In fairness it is a balencing game that absolutely no one can have the answer to until it is over and likely not even then.
Stay safe and help a neighbour out if you can. Also enjoy the day.
Official Counts Understate the U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/us/coronavirus-deaths-undercount.html
It was an interesting contrarian exercise, but reality seems to be intervening. Their numbers are much higher than ours, on a population of ~10 mil.
Swedish Covid19 stats, in Swedish sadly. Avlidna = dead
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/sweden-prepares-to-tighten-coronavirus-measures-as-death-toll-climbs
The Sweden approach is fascinating https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-why-is-sweden-staying-open-amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic/
Regardless of the stats this is still a tragedy that has no good ending.
Those charts from Lancet are case fatality ratios. The flu fatality statistics are for those requiring hospitalization, as quoted. They are not comparable.
I feel real sorry for the scientists doing these studies, as it is such a waste to use any reported Covid death data from Wuhan or China. We have relatives in Wuhan, they don’t believe government reported Covid death numbers at all. Body counts (from Jan 23 to Mar 23) from funeral homes in Wuhan is much much higher, even after subtracting normal winter death number.
I think the dates in the Bloomberg article are wrong.
I read this somewhere else:
Today they could be higher again.
A few days ago Lancet published a detailed statistical analysis of the mortality rate for the virus. The report is heavily into the statistics so only someone like LeoS will likely understand the entire report.
For the demographic under 70 years old the mortality rate is very low, with an average of less than 2% when only assessing the known people with infections, and disregarding the mild/asymptomatic people. In other words, using a similar methodology as the CDC used to identify annual flu deaths at 7% by comparing confirmed cases of hospitalizations to deaths and ignoring the unreported mild/asymptomatic cases of influenza/flu.
The Lancet authors clearly state that these percentages are very preliminary because statistics are notoriously inaccurate during the exponential growth stage of a pandemic.
For the demographic over 70 years of age the mortality rate is much higher as shown on the Lancet Charts, link below.
Lancet Charts: Estimates of case fatality ratio by age:
Complete Lancet Article
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext
I’m confused about the numbers in the article.
They seem to be comparing numbers from end of day yesterday to the middle of the day Sunday.
Every day around 6 oclock pst the New York numbers update. This is the highest I’ve seen them at mid-day for New York.
Despite your frequent capitalization of the word “exactly” the methods you are referencing are not using the same methodology. The Lancet article even mentions:
Capitalizing a word does not make it more true.
Also, even if the mortality rates based on hospitalizations are the same for Flu vs Covid-19, Covid-19 might still be way worse than Flu, because a much higher percentage of those getting Covid-19 seem to require hospilization. So saying the mortality rate based on this definition is mostly just academic.
This report from CTV news from April 3/2020 indicates that, while people in Wuhan China are obviously still very much concerned for their health and well being (as they should be), they are returning to work (only 70 days after the initial shutdown on Jan 23rd):
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/vendors-return-in-wuhan-as-china-prepares-virus-memorial-1.4880899
Also, today in New York, Governor Cuomo said the level of Covid deaths may already be dropping:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-05/new-york-reports-first-decline-in-daily-coronavirus-deaths
Also, out of interest, I looked up the word “Quarantine”. In short, it’s Italian and it means 40 days.
Quar·an·tine
/ˈkwôrənˌtēn/
Learn to pronounce
noun
noun: quarantine; plural noun: quarantines
a state, period, or place of isolation in which people or animals that have arrived from elsewhere or been exposed to infectious or contagious disease are placed.
“many animals die in quarantine”
verb
verb: quarantine; 3rd person present: quarantines; past tense: quarantined; past participle: quarantined; gerund or present participle: quarantining
impose isolation on (a person, animal, or place); put in quarantine.
Origin: mid 17th century: from Italian quarantina ‘forty days’, from quaranta ‘forty’.
So again, I reiterate that overall society is doing an excellent job of fighting this insidious virus. We are taking care of business by self-isolating for a period of time, we are practising good hygiene, and the ones who really want this problem to end ASAP are wearing a mask while out in public. We will overcome. Have faith. It will happen.
K i agree.. the number is not that bad .. no lets just call it 5%… you happy?
Wow.
COVID-19’s oldest known survivor: A World War II veteran who also survived the 1918 flu
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19s-oldest-known-survivor-a-world-war-ii-veteran-who-also-survived-the-1918-flu
@ Mr Potato
Think about your 11% mortality rate for a sec. We know that about ~50% of people are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. We also know that 80% or so of people never go to hospital. So you’re telling me that >50% of those going to hospital die? Please stop propagating these ridiculous estimates. The more likely scenario is that there are hundreds of thousands of infections in Italy and we just haven’t picked them up due to inadequate testing.
Source: this tweet thread: https://twitter.com/j_mcelroy/status/1246841965351538688
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/
hard to use outliers as an example .. in Iceland .. if the hospital never reach over capacity, then the mortality will remain low. In Italy, hospital capacity is completely over taxed, people dies – mortality relative high-(currently at 11% on apr 05)
You shouldn’t divide deaths by current case count. Since it takes on average 18 days from diagnosis to death, you would divide deaths by # cases 18 days ago. In Iceland that was March 18, when they had 250 cases, (source worldometer)
Giving Iceland a mortality rate of 4/250 = 1.6%, which is 5X your estimate.
Another valid estimate would be deaths / (resolved + deaths) which for Iceland (worldometer data) is
4 / (428+4) = 0.93%, still more than 3X your estimate.
Despite there widespread testing, there are still undiagnosed cases which would lower those numbers. No one knows how much because there isn’t good data yet.
If we going to throw around percentages then we need to compare apples to apples, and use EXACTLY the same methodology to calculate percentages.
The death rate percentages from COVID-19 are usually being based on information that compares deaths to known infections from hospital admissions. Everyone agrees that the COVID infection percentage rate will be much lower if we include the asymptomatic people who account for about 80+% of the people infected, yet the mild and asymptomatic cases are NOT included in the percentages. So, to compare apples to apples, when looking at the death rate from annual flu/influenza you need to follow EXACTLY the same method and ignore the mild/asymptomatic cases of annual flu/influenza and calculate based on deaths to hospitalizations for seasonal flu/influenza.
Refer to the official CDC numbers at link#1 below to use EXACTLY the same method to calculate the number of influenza/flu deaths yearly. For example in the 2018/19 flu season the number of hospitilizations (in USA) was 490,561 and deaths were 34,157. Simple math tells me that is a death rate of 7% of those sick enough to be admitted to hospital for common annual flu/influenza.
The CDC makes an educated guess at the total people who probably had the flu each season but I didn’t use that number because no one uses the mild/asymptomatic COVID-19 cases when calculating the percentage of deaths.
The noise factor in calculating COVID-19 death rates is slowly dissipating as the weeks pass as shown in link#2 below from the Lancet Medical Journal. If you compare the Lancet calculated death rate of 5.7% for COVID-19 to the annual flu death rate of 7%, using EXACTLY the same methodology, then the annual flu is worse than COVID-19. Lancet is clear on their calculation methodology: quote:
“Notably, the full denominator remains unknown because asymptomatic cases or patients with very mild symptoms might not be tested and will not be identified. Such cases therefore cannot be included in the estimation of actual mortality rates, since actual estimates pertain to clinically apparent COVID-19 cases”
Link#1
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
Link#2
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30195-X/fulltext
Re: mortality rates.
If you guys don’t believe Chinese #’s, how about Iceland with its widespread testing: 1486 cases, 4 deaths = 0.27% mortality.
Wow – how quickly things have shifted. Here is a post from 19 days ago.
And tomorrow we leave. I have a 20-year-old son with asthma that is acting up during pollen season and I am bringing him into isolation with me. This leaves our family split between two households for the foreseeable future but, in my view, we have reached this point.
Honestly, at this point. They deserve to get stranded out at Sea.
Agreed. However, the current economic models I have reviewed have mirrored this outcome for our economy, or something similar. I don’t know what the recovery timeline will look like as that is a crystal ball picture, so many variables, but we can try to identify best practices for best outcomes. So far what I’ve seen points to sharp lock down with potential gradual opening measures after the infection rate drops, along with widespread testing and tracing to control further outbreaks. I don’t know when this can happen, but we need to think forward and support viable businesses through this, as well as implement interim economic assistance and other measures to keep people who need the help safely fed and housed until a vaccine is available.
The Covid reports from official in China are never the true facts. We have relatives in Wuhan, so believe me, don’t trust any Covid numbers and claims released by the government there, unless you can confirm them.
I expect a fair number would.
I wouldn’t use nor trust any reported Covid death number from China.
For example, the official report of Covid death in Wuhan is about 2500. But we have relatives in Wuhan China (they are still in self-isolation mode now). They said lots people died in their own homes and other places that were not accounted inside the report.
There are 7 or 8 funeral homes in Wuhan, they started to release ashes of people died during past 60 days to relatives from March 23rd to April 3rd. The numbers was around 500 boxes each funeral home each day (announced by the homes). The normal death for the city (population 14 million) is about 5000 people each winter month (given by Chinese ambassador to France on french TV). Do the math yourself, (500 boxes x 7 funeral homes x 12 days) – 10000 normal death is how many? >>>> 2500 for sure. Note no photos allowed in and around funeral homes or the long lineups there (normally 5 to 6 hours wait), any of them leaked on the internet were removed.
They already shut Wuhan back down no?
This research is based on the Spanish Flu which effected working age populations much more than COVID-19. It is not clear if this will translate to the current economy that is more service based vs manufacturing based in 1918.
Either way it is the best information we currently have to go off. I think the difficulty will be finding the right time to ease the restrictions.
2.7 million is 7000 people a day. It’s all over the country.
New York State at nearly 20 million people makes up 5.9% of the population, so proportionally should have roughly 438 deaths a day.
Yesterday they had 630 deaths just from Covid-19. They’ve started having to keep body bags in grocery freezer trucks at the hospital because they don’t have the room for them anymore. So no, reality isn’t different, you’re just oblivious. Italy, Iran, and China have all had similar pictures in hard hit areas.
Please enlighten me on the way people adapted to the bubonic plague. By dying out in great numbers? What a marvelous adaption.
Mortality rates are likely to be proven to be much lower than the currently advertised estimates. It won’t be >1% and likely somewhere between 0.3%-0.7%. Read this recent paper from the Lancet: “Our estimated overall infection fatality ratio for China was 0.66% (0·39–1·33), with an increasing profile with age.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext
Also listen to this podcast:
https://munkdebates.com/podcast/covid-19
Having said that, this still has 3-7X the mortality rate of the seasonal flu.
I have multiple friends who work as doctors. Some in ICU. This attitude puts them in real danger especially considering the lack of protective gear.
I’m perfectly happy for you to get the disease to save the economy so long as you sign off on dying at home with no intervention by health care workers that you could also infect.
Absurd. Novelty and fear are keeping people away from cruises? How about the real risks posed by contracting COVID?
People will go back to some sort of more normal life when we have a vaccine. Until then, and for the next 12-18 months, nothing is going to be “normal” at all.
Incorrect way to look at it anyway. The correct way is via QALY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year
Still doesn’t change that during an outbreak the economy shuts down anyway and very similar rescue spending is required.
LeoM: I was actually calculating the percentage of deaths per year over the whole population OF A COUNTRY.
Again, the science does not appear to support your opinion that letting the virus run unchecked has an economic benefit.
Instead, it appears that there is no clear choice about “destroying” or “not destroying” the economy by making a political decision to lock down or let the virus run its course.
The virus unchecked will stop the economy and have severe economic fall-out.
Setting aside any humane or public health benefit for the lives saved, the economic costs alone of locking down on the pandemic appear to be less then those of not stopping it. Stricter measures implemented earlier appear more economically helpful for long-term economic recovery.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/208354
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/what-cost-the-lockdowns-they-may-have-helped-in-1918-krtmv6ppj
From the article:
So, 500,000 people dying from a virus translated into a loss of 6.1 trillion dollars. Okay, given that 2.7M people die in the US each year (they do), does that mean those deaths costs the economy 30-35 trillion dollars a year?
I don’t think history (or indeed, human behavior) agrees with you. Right now novelty and fear are keeping people away, but eventually people will choose to go on with their lives. Humans are incredibly adaptable animals – whether it was the bubonic plague, Spanish flu, London and Germany getting bombed to smithereens, people adapt to the new reality, whatever it is. This is no different. The melodramatic, “Military staff carting bodies out the door” while visually disturbing and frightening, is a consequence of the net of an outbreak phase and a system that hasn’t been prepared to deal with it. 2.7M people die in the US each year, so you’d think we’d be overwhelmed by body-bags piling up all over the place. Reality of course, is very different.
I think that we’re going to find out what will happen in the “open it up” scenario. I suspect Trump will be pushing the acceptance angle a lot harder in the coming weeks. Heck, he’s talking about opening mass sporting events – which to be fair, I do think is ridiculous at this stage…
Barrister, you’re right, the projected death rate isn’t 5%, it is less than 1% when the asymptomatic and mild cases are included in the calculation. But to appease the doom and gloom crowd I used 5% because even at 5% it’s crazy to destroy the economy; at 1% it’s total insanity.
Exactly. It’s not like people would still go on cruises and out to restaurants when the military is carting bodies away from the hospitals. The shutdown would look quite similar but with more lives lost.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/opinion/coronavirus-china.html
Another article I came upon this morning:
‘Tip of the iceberg’: is our destruction of nature responsible for Covid-19?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/18/tip-of-the-iceberg-is-our-destruction-of-nature-responsible-for-covid-19-aoe
Downtown break-ins and burglaries surge as pandemic-hit businesses shutter
https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/downtown-break-ins-and-burglaries-surge-as-pandemic-hit-businesses-shutter-1.24112941
Union representing B.C. Ferries workers readying for battle after layoffs
Johnston said the union was not surprised by the need to reduce service or to adjust the workforce, but he said they remain surprised B.C. Ferries “announced layoffs without taking any of the steps they are obligated to take under the collective agreement.”
https://www.timescolonist.com/business/union-representing-b-c-ferries-workers-readying-for-battle-after-layoffs-1.24112930
LeoM: I dont believe that the untreated mortality projections are as high as five percent. I thought it was less than one percent but I could really be wrong. Does anyone know for sure?
Talk about shameless.
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/airbnb-s-request-for-tax-breaks-raises-red-flags-for-vancouver-advocate-1.4882572
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/04/how-the-covid-19-crisis-locked-airbnb-out-of-its-own-homes
Pass the popcorn.
Economic modelling shows that strict measures, and the earlier the better, will save money and jobs. Even a yearlong lock down while a vaccine is developed is predicted to save about 2 trillion dollars in the US vs. economic lives lost. And the economy will shut down anyway if the epidemic grows unchecked. Of the two not so good options, lock down appears better. I’d be in favour of much stricter measures.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/modelers-weigh-value-lives-and-lockdown-costs-put-price-covid-19#
Kelly Clarkson – Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn676-fLq7I
From a real estate perspective, I think the single biggest factor is: How long will this shutdown last?
Let’s look at the facts: In Wuhan, China (ground zero), the first day of their lockdown was Jan 23/2020. By March 18/2020 (less than two months later), China was reporting no new local cases. By April 1st they were in the process of re-starting their economy.
Applying this timeline to Canada (and we are doing a pretty darn good job of fighting this virus in our own right) our shutdown started about March 15th (four days after the WHO declared a pandemic on March 11th). So by May 15th, Canada will be in our recovery stage. By June 1st, we will be in the process of re-starting our economy. Yes, it will take several months thereafter to get back to normal, but we will get back to normal. Today’s news from Dr. Henry is very promising. So we have reason to be optimistic. We will get through this folks, have faith.
Pippa’s Song
The year is at the spring,
And day is at the morn,
Morning’s at seven,
The hillside’s dew pearled,
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn,
God’s in His heaven –
And all’s right with the world!
Robert Browning
Everything about this virus and people’s reactions to it leave me bewildered. For example, to be brutally blunt, are the global politicians actually going to sacrifice the global economy for the sake of trying to save the less than 5% of people who will succumb, most of whom are already on death’s doorstep due to old age or serious chronic illnesses?
The fear is evident in the posts of several people who contribute to this blog. Get over it!!! Some of us will get sick and a few might die, me included. That’s how life works.
I couldn’t agree more with Barrister’s comment:
I think you meant to say, test-based reporting of cases is meaningless. I think test numbers are meaningful. I agree with the other posters that if we had the capacity and resources we should be testing more, so we would have a clearer picture.
I don’t think the only factor is capacity. The other factor is resources. Taking a test uses up PPE, test kits, reactive agent used for the test, etc. My understanding is that some or all of these are still in short supply. I don’t think the health authorities are being open about why they are still rationing tests. Maybe they don’t want to highlight how short we are on supply for some of these resources.
Either way I do hope we can increase capacity and resources for testing soon and I assume this would then be used. I agree this would help us to ease the current restrictions.
You’re missing my point. I’m not saying testing is useless, I’m saying test numbers are useless for comparing the spread of the virus. Only deaths and hospitalizations can really tell you how much it has spread.
I am wondering too why they don’t test to capacity. Someone floated the theory to me that they want to conserve PPE, and each test uses one set of PPE (not 100% certain this is true). Not a bad theory though. More and more evidence they are desperately short of PPE. Talked to a community nurse today, she said the nurses are frustrated/angry because they don’t get any PPE under the justification that they are safe and they don’t need it. Dealing with vulnerable elderly in the community. The only explanation I can think of is they don’t have any spare PPE.
No… you test the people coming in, and quarantine them if in doubt.
So the rest of us are just part of the herd? My question is that we have capacity of testing 3500 per day, why do we only test 1400 per day??? Again, it is not about the number, but about catching infected people to control the spread …
People cannot seem to understand that we are not a hermetically sealed entity. Go ahead, test everyone and quarantine all that are sick. Then resume all normal activity, minus those that are quarantined.
Meanwhile, inter-provincial and international migrants come and go left right and center, and we continue to eat and handle consumer goods that have been handled by other infected people.
So what do you do then? Test every one in the Province, every single day?
“Lockdown is over”. Ugh, I need a drink.
Don’t worry dude. This will blow over soon. It’s just another SARS or flu. MSM being the MSM getting everyone all up in a tissy to sell shit. Can’t let the cure be worse than the cause. You and none of your friends or loved ones will be affected by this.
Where you at now homes?
England averages 1400 deaths a day from everything in a regular year. OHHHH we’re half way there…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk
If you test everyone, and quarantine everyone who is sick, then the lockdown is over.
I’d say that’s meaningful.
The purpose of test is NOT for number reporting, but to catch infected people and force them to quarantine, to reduce the virus spread. Thus is why not testing to the capacity is not right!!!
And another key quote from that article
“ epidemiologists like Bauer say hospitalizations and deaths provide a better understanding of the course of the pandemic than test-based reporting of cases”
Test numbers are basically meaningless at this point. The only thing that matters is hospitalizations and deaths
That was the point, since they can’t put everyone into quarantine like in Wuhan, we must perform the test up to our max capacity. Why do they only perform 1400 tests, not 3500 per day as Adrian Dix said we can do? Those infected and not tested people may have mild or non symptoms and no need to go hospitals, but they will spread the virus. What is the purpose of testing only 1/3 of our capacity, create herd immunity?
Great chart of who gets tested by province
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5520812?__twitter_impression=true
Total economic destruction aside, that wouldn’t work, especially on a scales as small as just the province. Even on a scale of the whole country, it wouldn’t get rid of the virus. This would hold true whether it was 14 days, 21 days, or 101 days.
As long as any one at all is coming in from the outside, or any consumable goods in the economy are coming in that is handled by another infected human being, the virus will remain present in the population and will take off again as soon as restrictions are relaxed. You cannot hermetically seal the population in an economy that is completely integrated globally and is dependent on that integration to operate.
FYI: one reader’s comment today on G&M for an article that BC might have flatten the infection curve:
“I hope the decrease in BC new cases is real, however the number of daily new cases seems to reflect how many tests performed on the day, last week, BC are getting 60-80 new cases a day with over 3000 tests daily, this week, BC are reporting 30-40 new cases a day with less than 1400 tests a day. Even though Dr Henry said BC continue to perform extensive/aggressive tests, the number doesn’t seem to support the statement! Getting more people tested will give us a more realistic picture, less test will mislead people to think we have turned the corner, and we are safe!”
I support this comment 100%. Testing under capacity is not right!!! Unless we put everyone into 14 or 21 days quarantine, those infected but undetected ones will spread the virus even with physical distancing. So BC new case number is not really reduced, just being held until it gets worse. What are we doing, partial herd immunity???
Yes, and “thankfully” it won’t be by much.
We’re not at the point of acceptance yet, but when mass unemployment really begins to bite and the food banks reach the breaking point – hungry and hopeless people will realize the true nature of the trade-off being made. For now, many people are still saying lock it down even tighter, yet virtually no one alive today knows what that will mean beyond an abstraction. Government cannot supplement a non-productive economy for very long.
Suffering and death is going to be had either way. Glad I’m not a politician faced with explaining going one route over another…
Agreed. And hopefully that rationale will help in opening the schools even though this probably won’t be “over” by then.
lol Soper, I wouldn’t worry about introvert bragging about net worth. He or she (can’t remember which it is) previously admitted that dual income, parental help and a basement tenant was needed to buy a house in 2009 for 500k. Given that he/she still constantly brags on an anonymous internet forum about net worth, I don’t expect introvert to have any tangible improvements in socioeconomic status outside of pure dumb luck.
My guess is they will reopen, any effort to flatten the curve will be finished by September regardless of the degree of success. (assuming that it does not mutate into something different and much worse). At some point we will accept that the virus will end up thinning the herd.
There is a limited time that one can effectively impose social distancing or closing the whole economy.
Only Soper knows.
Yes.
What are people’s predictions on schools? Will they reopen in September?
Anyone who has kids in school knows how incredibly risk-averse the schools are. Hard to believe they open if there is still a whiff of risk around at that point.
Hope I am wrong
Good information provided by Dr. Henry today on current research and the expert advisory body that has been formed to provide advice to government.
I’d rather have been wrong on that. Hopefully I’m wrong on BC. I’ve looked more into what the BC plan is, and I’m starting to see the logic. They’re using all the testing capabilities that they have for health care workers and nursing home to try to stem the transmission to older people, and to people in hospitals. It looks like they’re trying to reduce the number of people who will end up hospitalized to reduce the strain on the healthcare system. Since older people are most vulnerable, and more likely to be hospitalized, it makes sense to focus on those when you have limited resources. At the end of the day if there is local transmission there will be people that end up in the hospital. It’ll be interesting to see if BC’s age group that ends up in hospital ends up being much lower (like Germany). I’d be better if BC just had the tests to actually test people.
On February 29th the first death in Washington State was announced.
How much closer could you get?
I’ll give you credit, you did begrudgingly congratulate me for using a word correctly after calling me out on using it incorrectly. I don’t know that you’ve actually admitted you were ever wrong exactly, but we’re splitting hairs.
+1 Thanks totoro
I would say almost entirely.
Soper, credit where credit is due: you did foresee this pandemic coming at the beginning of March:
https://househuntvictoria.ca/2020/03/02/february-market-report/#comment-66439
At the beginning of March, I did not think things would get this bad, this fast, in Canada.
If we’re honest, I don’t think many of us recognized, one full month ago, what day-to-day life would look like today.
Here’s what Les Leyne wrote, looking back at March 1st, in a recent column examining the chronology of events:
https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/les-leyne-virus-s-stealth-attack-on-b-c-1.24110289
P.S. Does Trump ever admit he’s wrong?
Message to anybody “waiting a couple of months until this rides out ” before listing their home for sale:
Bravo! The mortgage lending rules that are tightening by the day are going to mean so much more money out there for buyers to offer on your house soon, right?
The many mortgage deferrals out there can’t possibly mean more listing competition in a few months when some desperate and some irresponsible owners realize that they won’t be able to catch up on the delayed/compounded interest (and especially when some still arent fully employed).
Some airbnb owners can’t possibly add to sales listings competition in a couple months when they realize their cash cow is dead for a while yet… and that there is less public appetite to risk virus spread by staying at random stranger’s homes.
And, there can’t possibly be a backlog of people that will want to list (or must list) too, that have been delaying listing their properties right along with you.
But at least you’ll make your Realtor happy when you agree not to list for a few more months. So you have that going for you, hooray! I hear they’re really good at making sympathetic faces when you follow their advice and lose tens of thousands in potential value, so there’s that too. Totally worth it!
By all means, if the market is even worse for you in a couple of months, let’s all act surprised and agree with real estate professionals when they say, “Nobody saw the possibility of this coming!”. We’ll all just pretend that even the perenially optimistic cheerleader BC Real Estate Association didn’t predict lower prices in coming months.
OR you could list now, possibly get a reasonable offer beforehand, though still not be forced to take any offer you don’t like. … Pffft! That’s a stupid idea!
Yeah, I guess we are just f****** if we can’t even do simple things.
It is okay to have differences of opinion and get a little uptight when times are tough like this. We are in this together, but we don’t have to agree about everything. I think James is legitimately concerned, and especially concerned for the health of those he cares for like many of us are. Introvert makes me laugh even now, very witty. I like then both.
Oops! Forgot the most obvious… you both couldn’t predict a pandemic in March!
Also:
I suspect official inflation as per CPI won’t go up after this just like it didn’t after the financial crisis despite trillions of QE.
But still lots of unintended consequences from the extra liquidity sloshing around the world. I think house price inflation in the last decade is partly due to that.
Community nurses are angry that they get no PPE and are told it’s totally fine, they don’t need them.
The reality seems to be we have an extreme shortage of masks in this province when not even nurses can get them. Homemade masks are fine, leftover dust masks are fine, but no member of the public should be sourcing surgical or N95 masks at this point until the shortage is fixed.
Lack of social cohesion and lack of masks. I can just imagine if we rolled out the requirement to screen each kid’s temperature before going to school. First the school districts wouldn’t be able to figure out the system to manage that, then parents wouldn’t do it, then kids would show up that weren’t reporting, and the teachers wouldn’t have the ability to send them home. It would be a total mess. And no masks available so we can’t give everyone their weekly allotment.
I suspect local production of some of these PPE items will be a result of this crisis. So we pay more for masks, not the end of the world.
@ Introvert: “A troll is a person who hides behind anonymity and posts inflammatory messages with the intent of upsetting people…etc. ” And you never give up!
And yours?
A bully who if you look closely very much resembles the orange man from the south.
Here’s some examples
This ain’t saskatoon (and other prairie disparities) vs shit hole countries
Both brag about their net worth constantly
Inferring another poster killed his children vs Obama’s birth certificate
Was no coincidence that colten boushie was killed in saskatchewan vs. Mexicans are rapists.
I can only imagine how you got your husband… grab them by their genitals.
Absolutely love how you try to bring my spouse into this.
Is there any level you won’t stoop to just to belittle people on a message board?
You are pathetic.
Perhaps you are overlooking these issues:
– there are hundreds dead, with projections of many tens of thousands more to come
– the economy is crumbling, with millions headed for permanent unemployment
Taiwan is an example of how to handle this pandemic right. Why aren’t we doing it right?
Bonnie Henry, Theresa Tam, and Patty Hajdu have bungled this from the start and need to be replaced.
Leo you said recently that 1 and 3 houses were going over ask (I think) has that changed much in the last couple weeks?
Soper’s spouse must be delighted to be in daily company with someone who knows it all.
Thanks to the poster here who introduced Ron Butler (mortgage broker’s) twitter feed. Here’s another interesting post from him, from March 31st:
1.
“We Will See A New Approach to Mortgage Lending
Not a wholesale change but slow incremental tightening
Likely it will start with Rental Purchase Mortgages, they will require all cash down payments, no more get a HELOC on one house to provide down payment on the rental”
“/2 Also likely to see a limitation on how many rentals can be owned
I suspect soon once there are 3 rentals in a person’s name that will be the limit” . He clarifies later that is a global limit prediction, not per-bank limit.
…
(He goes on to predict):”No borrowed down payment will be accepted on a rental purchase
HELOC, Refinance, makes no difference
Down payment must come from unencumbered resources”; no parent/sibling gift loophole on rentals; However if you ask for a mortgage on the rental property in the first year and admit it entirely financed by a HELOC you will like not get the mortgage;if you incorporate, 35% cash down payment will become the norm there.. which is same as 26 years ago
My original post:
The response:
I was talking about the USA. Canada was then brought into the conversation. I used BC minimum wage in my example.
Well yes, if you’re talking about a supply disruption in California, for sure it would have a significant effect on prices. Has in the past.
But I thought we were talking about getting unemployed Canadians to work in farms here instead of foreign workers.
Bring on the price gains!
Ventura county is in California.
They’re currently not picking because they can’t get enough workers. USA and California in specific are a massive portion of the NA total of all fruits and veggies and nuts.
Like just about everything else, the quantify of strawberries that households are willing to buy varies inversely with the price. My guess is that locally grown strawberries simply wouldn’t find any buyers at high labour costs and would rot in fields. Strawberries and associated fruits across NA would see a small increase in price due to drop in Canadian supply, which is only a small part of the NA total.
It was a hypothetical.
We don’t exactly know what is going to happen to a reserve currency when that country goes with negative interest rates. What happened with the swiss franc when they started with negative interest rates in 2015?
What happens in a deflationary environment when they can’t decrease interest rates enough to actually lower real interest rates enough to stimulate the economy? What happens to mortgages in a deflationary environment?
Also China has closed up a bit again. 3 days after opening theaters, they closed them. They’ve closed up Wuhan again.
We don’t really know what’s happening over there exactly.
Again, Mexico can’t exactly make strawberries out of air for extra people to pick.
Strawberry season is now in Ventura county.
Almost as if I was talking about more than just strawberries, and just using them as one example.
Keeps on dropping.
We could see sales in april drop 70% from last year.
In the US one major party has spent years attacking most independent scientific expertise as untrustworthy and biased. So it is not surprising that a Republican governor would take a long time to accept or even listen to scientific reality.
I am thankful that in Canada politicians of all stripes still turn to the best experts in a crisis rather than trying to construct a Fox News alternative reality.
They have bad testing so their actual cases are much higher than they have reported.
You can see it in the chart on this page.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing
Canada has 7989 tests done per million with a 4.1% positive rate
US has 4572 tests per million people and a 18.3% positive rate indicating severe undercounting of cases out there
My 2 cents on inflation discussion below…..aren’t we in a deflationary environment in a pandemic? Even with cheap interest who is buying things right now?
China is back producing again so if you do buy something from dollarama they just increase production.
I don’t really see an inflation environment.
I am still trying to figure out why the death rate in the US seems so much higher than ours at the moment. The US population is very roughly ten times the size ours. Our deaths are just under 200 and you would expect the US to be around 2000 not 7000. Even if you totally remove the deaths in NYC the numbers still dont seem to make sense.
Any thoughts out there.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/interest-rates-coronavirus-evans-1.5515884
BC ferries cutting back service, with traffic down 80%. And laying off hundreds of ferry workers.
https://www.bcferries.com/current_conditions/travel-advisory.html
“ The COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect all of us, including BC Ferries. Traffic across all of our routes is down approximately 80% because of COVID-19, and BC Ferries is adjusting service levels across multiple routes. The Coastal Ferry Services Contract with the Province of British Columbia has been amended to permit these service reductions.
Through this challenging time, BC Ferries’ employees have demonstrated courage and determination to support coastal ferry service. Unfortunately, these service level reductions will result in temporary layoffs for hundreds of dedicated and loyal employees. This was not an easy decision to make. BC Ferries’ goal is to keep the layoffs to as short as possible. The company will need all these skilled people back as soon as possible to help restore ferry services when traffic returns”
https://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet-quote-2013-12?op=1
Krugman also correctly predicted the US housing bust (when everyone from Ben Bernanke on down said it couldn’t happen) and said the Euro was a bad idea without fiscal integration, which is now widely accepted.
I get that the governmental powers that be are usually better informed than all of us at home, have top leadings experts at their disposal, see the “big picture” in ways we can’t. On many topics I too typically have found it annoying to read random critical internet postings by armchair quarterbacks at home who don’t have true expertise.
How dare we second guess the people in charge, and their professionals. Who are you, who are we, after all? I get it.
However, the fact is that such online discussions sometimes reveal truths and ineptitude at higher levels. And sometimes, just sometimes, the truths ,or at least the rational discussion, can spread like wildfire, and result in change and/or public recognition of ineptitude.
The easiest example is Donald Trump, and his shocking ineptitude over covid-19 ( nevermind other matters). If the so called “leader of the free world” can regularly screw up so very many things so very badly, surely there’s nothing wrong with people online — experts or not — second-guessing any of our Dear Leaders and their actions.
And let us not forget the Chinese doctor who dared speak out early online about Covid-19, and was arrested for his troubles. How dare he go online and second guess the Dear Leaders and their experts!
It is a blessing (and a curse) that any of us at home can publicly put out our arguments, our evidence (or embarassing lack thereof), and community critical thinking can logically deliberate and either say, “sit down, jackass, because xyz” or “hey you have a point there”, or both.
I too have thought,many times, “oh this guy must think he knows better than somebody in high office or with a PhD in ____ , how ridiculous”. But in truth, using only that approach attempts to unfairly stifle argument. Yeah, there are a lot of baseless conspiracy theories and dumbasses out there, but there is also sometimes truth and logic.
Next time you feel like somebody on the internet can’t possibly be worth listening over the powers that be, consider the governor of the U.S. state of Georgia, and these news from YESTERDAY:
“Despite the Governor’s mansion being a 20 minute drive from the CDC, Gov. Brian Kemp claims he just learned [on March 31st] that people without symptoms can still spread the coronavirus.”. So for the past several months, every single dumbass poster on HHV has been better informed to lead the covid-19 response in the state of Georgia, than its own governor.
Since introvert is the queen of bringing old posts back.
Lets see the beginning of March:
Double Major, Econ/English, at your service.
Also wasn’t it you calling this another SARS or Swine Flu, and saying how annoyed you were that Swine flu was called a pandemic?
Didn’t realize that you were a epidemiologist.
I just checked my fridge and my strawberries bought at Costco are from Mexico. My point was that certain countries will still be able to produce cheap strawberries, so if Canada is not able to produce the cheaply that 15% share from Mexico will increase and prevent the prices from going too high.
Strawberries only make up a tiny percentage of the food purchased from stores.
An extra thought, where’s all the cheap labour going to find the extra food to pick?
Agreed.
I don’t think now is the time to lose faith, nor have I lost faith in our government. I’m very glad I’m here and not in the US. But I’ve never had blind faith.
In my view, it is okay to raise concerns where the reason given for testing criteria is that widespread testing is not necessary. This is particularly so when Canadian infectious disease experts and the WHO are advising that this is a critical strategy. The difference in the advice may come down to lack of testing materials, but “it is not necessary” is not enough.
Just go outside without your mask. If the deer have been keeping up with HHV that should be enough to scare them off.
Who should the blame really lie with? People buying publicly available PPE, stores for supplying it? or the hospitals for not having it on hand?
Likely all 3. But for Dr.Rob specifically, option #3 big time. Of course, he shouldn’t say that, but lay trust in his higher ups.
Watching doctors in the US wrap themselves in Hefty bags for PPE is so fucking disheartening.
So much for American exceptionalism.
Not a single instance! Grocery stores have adopted it early and started handing out masks even.
When did I offer advice?
I said listen to the WHO and test test test.
Totoro is saying listen to the CDC and other experts who are saying everyone wearing a mask makes a difference.
Neither of us have said we’re an expert in this, listen to our advice. Beautiful strawman you’ve set up though, think it’d work for scaring the deer in my yard?
Clearly “the system” isn’t perfect. There are huge unknowns, we are learning new things every day, and therefore even the experts are making things up as they go along to some extent.
However, NOTHING I have seen so far indicates to me that the BC or Canadian public should lose faith in our top medical officers and instead start following the advice of random internet folk who have suddenly become public health experts in the last four weeks.
Agreed.
It was never an either or. Cloth masks have been quickly and successfully implemented in the Czech Republic in ten days where there was no prior culture of wearing them. As far as “doing it right”, here are the complete CDC guidelines for safely wearing cloth masks:
Yep, that is all.
You mean that Austria – whose mask law takes effect this coming Monday – hasn’t had issues with compliance?
“ Die große Herausforderung für alle Unternehmen ist nach wie vor: Wo bekommen wir vier Millionen Masken pro Tag?”
“The big challenge for all businesses is still: where do we get four million masks per day?”
Also this:
They did exactly that in Czech Republic and Austria.
They haven’t had any issues w/r to compliance.
Yes all of Asia is masked because they’ve been doing it for years, they have penalties for not wearing one, and their governments took over mask manufacturing and each family can get their allotment of masks every week.
None of that is true here. If they had said everyone wear masks what would the compliance rate be? How much panic from no one having masks? There are no masks to wear outside of homemade ones and it’s quite correct that if you don’t do it right then they could be a vector for infection. So they decided to focus on the social distancing. No contact is better than contact with mask.
Will it be the right decision? Hard to tell but so far it’s gone OK
Maybe for the second wave we will be prepared with masks for all and a simple home test so we can avoid an economic shutdown.
Having worked at very high levels on issues of high importance I’d say you’d be surprised at how complex decisions get made by those in the public eye – and how slowly this can happen when there is uncertainty or fast-changing information and you are managing public opinion/panic. A lot of these public decisions come down to the quality of the advice received and well-meaning but incomplete advice can easily lead to poor decisions by government leaders.
I think you are putting far too much faith in the system atm. Not to knock Dr. Henry, she is doing a good job and people love her, but please consider that when someone tells you that widespread testing is “not necessary” when credible evidence exists that it is, we may be taking a wrong turn no matter how nice the person saying it is or how much experience they have.
The same goes for masks. I’m off that issue now that the CDC has officially recommended them, but I will say that strong, credible evidence existed for putting the public into cloth masks at the same time as Dr. Henry was stating they were not necessary for those without symptoms and that people would not be able to use them correctly. Think carefully about that. All of Asia is masked. Their public health officers were saying the opposite and warning our government officials and doctors they were making a big mistake. And, as it turns out, our public health officer was dead wrong in her advice, and this has already cost lives imo. I don’t blame her personally for a minute, but I am also not give advisers a pass on this based on “making calculated decisions”. They failed to accurately assess the available information and simply relied on the WHO – who was wrong on this point.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/diy-cloth-face-coverings.html
You clearly didn’t understand that I was saying you’ve been playing economist for a decade.
Glass houses, stones yada yada.
The one thing that is inexcusable is the lack of PPE on hand. That I’m just baffled by but I suspect it simply came from decades of squeezed budgets for hospitals. But otherwise I’m pretty happy with the response here
We can all see that you can’t refute a single thing I’ve said, and all you can do is attack the person.
When did they decrease interest rates?
You didn’t see the pandemic coming in March?
We can all see that you are clearly better suited to the role of BC’s Provincial Health Officer than Bonnie Henry.
Yes, and I’d wager that anyone who bought during the decade or so that I’ve been on this blog doesn’t regret the decision.
Yes, and Leo also thought prices would increase, based on market conditions.
I’m sorry that I somehow didn’t see this pandemic coming, like I’m sure you did, oh wise one.
She was also privy to all of this months ago, and has direct experience with SARS. Think that it would have been a good idea to maybe get more of these things?
Good to know that all you have is appeal to authority.
Another day another few confirmed cases and a decrease of the number in hospital. Sorry I just don’t see the evidence that B.C. is bungling the response here
If you look at what the PHO’s powers are during a declared public emergency such as this, you will find that they are sweeping.
Bureaucracy and lack of autonomy are not holding her back.
There may be reasons that you haven’t considered for why certain “best practices” haven’t been followed in B.C.
Do you think Dr. Henry isn’t aware of WHO recommendations? Is that likely?
What is far more likely is that the PHO is making calculated decisions every step of the way, and is considering a far wider range of possibilities, problems, and consequences than we can know.
There are almost certainly a multitude of facts that the PHO is privy to, which we citizens are not, upon which she is making the most informed and judicious decisions possible given the circumstances.
For example, I bet she and very few others are aware of how many days’ worth of medical supplies and swabs the province has at its disposal, as well as when new inventory of said items might — or might not — arrive. That’s just one example.
Haven’t you been telling people for years to invest in Victoria housing?
DIdn’t you also predict a banner year for Victoria housing because of the dropping interest rates?
Or maybe she is part of a bureaucracy that is not actually able to respond to a crisis without many layers of consultation and decision-making.
I don’t think she is personally mishandling things, she is a calm presence but is the public face for a big bunch of moving pieces and so decisions are slowed as new evidence and information is weighed, some of it contradictory. This is government, not business. This is not about individual decision-making, and government is by its nature slow and reactive, not proactive – unless someone steps up and is willing to take the risk and has the backing of the government.
What I would say is that testing, and quarantine enforcement, tracing, and mask wearing, are not being handled in accordance with what research says would be best practices or most effective. Is that one individual’s fault? No. Are people do their best? Most likely. Is that a life and death problem requiring more? Unfortunately, yes.
Krugman is worth listening to. He has been more right more often than most economists. And yes he has been wrong sometimes, too.
Amen
Did I say Krugman has never been wrong about anything? He was correct about inflation with respect to the previous economic disaster, and many others at the time were not.
Good to know that besides being a microbiologist and public health expert you’re also an economist.
I’ve done piece work too. It paid a hell of a lot more than minimum wage though.
Actually read the Krugman quote now…
10 million people out of work (and health insurance) in 2 weeks, and he’s talking about pent up demand.
That’s some Rob Ford level drugs he’s taking.
WHO says test test test.
BC says, we’ve done enough.
Sorry, but in my opinion saying we have no local transmission is bullshit. Look how not testing has worked for the states. New York State alone is going to be worse than Italy.
Leo S said: “A few outbreaks in care homes and hospitalization rates go through the roof.”
Yes in assisted living places where seniors are relatively mobile/independent, but few hospitalizations are going to come about from more intensive care homes. In those intensive care homes, I’ve seen a fair number of seniors allowed to die with minimum help/support. Doctors prefer it this way, and generally try hard to persuade family to sign a “do not rescucitate” form beforehand. Even when that form isn’t signed, I’ve seen patients left to peacefully die anyways, with no trip to the hospital. The rationale generally given is that at the patient’s age/condition a hospital visit may prolong the life for a few more days or a week, but that the senior will needlessly suffer throughout.
When I’ve seen intensive care homes on lockdown (no visitors) in the past for a flu outbreak, the weakest patients get sick there, stay there as they harbor the bug, die in the facility, and that’s that.
I’ve never seen one single clamshell of strawberries from Mexico before. I’ve seen plenty from the USA, and local ones. Never from mexico. Google tells me 15% come from Mexico, but damned if I’ve ever seen one.
Based on how inflation is actually calculated: 11.28% on food purchased from stores in 2017.
Gasoline: a measly 3.34%
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62f0014m/62f0014m2019001-eng.htm
“By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” —Paul Krugman, 1998
What percentage of people’s income go to labour intensive fresh farm products? Even if all these products go up by 100%, if Canadians spend about 1% of there income on it, it would only equate to 1% inflation. I think people spend way more on gas than fresh fruit and this has dropped by about a third.
Finally I think a lot of our strawberries are also imported from Mexico and they probably have even extra cheap labour right now so I doubt the price of strawberries will go up that much.
Maybe — just maybe — the armchair quarterbacks here should consider the possibility that the Provincial Health Officer, who coordinated Toronto’s response to SARS, has years of experience at the BC CDC and other places, and is privy to all available facts — isn’t in fact mishandling the crisis in any significant way.
It looks like economist Paul Krugman — who correctly predicted that inflation wouldn’t be an issue after the GFC — isn’t terribly worried about inflation this time, either:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/notes-on-the-coronacoma-wonkish.html
Just like the restaurants said they needed foreign workers. Of course businesses prefer a captive labour force with no bargaining power.
I’ve done piece work. It is very motivating
lol, where do the plans funding comes from?
1) contribution from members
2) investment from existing assets/equity under the administration
If the total benefits outweigh the funding, someone will bail them out…. ( it is going to be a grey swan event)
the bigger picture I think is the low-interest rate that is now against the actuaries’s assumption.
I am expecting the contribution rate will have to go up in next few years due to the longevity/heath Canadians
It’s gruelling work that takes a long time to get good at.
It’s not like your average office worker or starbucks employee is going to have a profitable time doing this job.
Based on what the piece meal rate is for strawberries – $0.424 a pound (https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/forms-resources/igm/esr-part-4-section-18) and what the average U-pick estimates it takes to pick a quart (1.5 pounds, 10 – 15 minutes). You’ll could be making in between $2.50 and $3.80 an hour! Great success! Typically one of the people who’d normally do that job will pick at least double, so suddenly you’d be paying 2 people minimum wage ($13.85) for the same amount of strawberries. So $27.70 what would have once cost $5.
Add in the farmers profit, plus the grocery store mark up, and you’ve got yourself some massive inflation.
Here’s my crystal ball prediction. Buy Zoom Stock now! (Just Kidding).
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=zoom+ticker+stock
Leo S, there is a lag between when you get infected and when you end up in the hospital if you are that unlucky 20%, I believe that duration is typically 2 weeks.
The farmers themselves say they need the foreign workers. There may be a lot of unemployed Canadians, but they are not going to leave their families at a time like this for a couple of months’ work. Plus the foreign workers have the skills the farmers need.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canadas-food-supply-at-risk-as-pandemic-tightens-borders-to-farm/
Patriotz: “Actuaries are very much aware that someone who’s now 82 is likely to be around for a while longer. What’s your point?”
That is very true, Patriotz, however they use a mortality table to establish your pension. It isn’t a moving target. Nobody receiving a pension gets a reduced pension once they reach 82 or 92. The mortality table establishes the most likely age of death and your pension is predicated on that number.
So, in order to ensure that the pension fund is secure they assume “people are more likely to die at a certain age”. …. and they are right more times than wrong. Once again, people that are dying from Covid19 are well within or beyond the mortality age in B.C..
Regardless, the ones that will most likely pay the biggest price for this shutdown are the homeowners. 500,000 have now applied for a deferment in their mortgage payments. Leverage is a godsend on an upwards trajectory and a devil on the way down.
Unemployment numbers are reaching 2,000,000 and OSFI and the banks are preparing for the worse. There is a very real possibility of a double whammy, a Canada wide housing crash amidst another GFC.
Ignore the noise and look at the big picture.
There are soon going to be a record number of unemployed Americans (and Canadians). Kind of undercuts the argument that we need to bring in foreign workers to pick our crops. If there is a bit of inflation due to the agricultural sector having to pay a living wages to temporary workers, so be it.
Quebec’s hospitalization rate is way lower currently, but most of their cases have come to light more recently. Either way, I think it should be fairly obvious at this point that BC is under counting. I can’t personally see the rational of keeping your head in the sand.
Hospitalization rates seem to be wildly varying depending on the source. I’ve seen anywhere from that 8% to 30% reported. Of course the fact that it is reported anywhere has to be put in context of that location’s testing rate. Also it is much higher in older people, so increasing hospitalization rate could also be reflective of distribution changes of people that have it. A few outbreaks in care homes and hospitalization rates go through the roof.
Funnily if the actual hospitalization rate is 8%, that means we’re missing around 2000 cases. Which is pretty close to what we’d be at if we tracked along with Ontario.
Leo said: “Foreign buyers still extremely low… between 1 and 4 buyers a month paying foreign buyers tax”
Great, let’s hope it stays that low. Property prices are too high, and inventory is too low, to allow people that don’t earn/declare their income in British Columbia (and don’t pay our high level of income taxes) to unfairly be competing for real estate on the same playing field as hardworking Canadian families that already face an uphill battle to owning.
This goes double during the covid-19 crisis.
??? Actuaries at BC Pensions are well aware of that.
They forgot “If I get corona, i get corona, at the end of the day I’m not gonna let it stop me from partying.” and “Herd immunity”.
Canadian doctor doing daily updates on stats:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J1OmX2FlsM&t=32s
Here’s the data on hospitalization rate
Increasing percentage of cases hospitalized would indicate we are undercounting more now than we were a week ago.
Unlikely we are going to see consumer price inflation approaching that level with collapsed demand, even if some items such as strawberries do go up a lot (and they have spiked up in the past for various reasons).
When everybody’s back to work inflation could start going up. But there is so much consumer debt – and a lot more is being added now – that the CB’s are not going to have to raise interest rates to 1980 levels to keep inflation under 2%.
Foreign buyers still extremely low. Last few months have been below the reporting threshold, so somewhere between 1 and 4 buyers a month paying foreign buyers tax
RBC listed the total cost for the Federal Govt wage subsidy and other programs so far…. More than $105 billion CAD
“ federal government having now unveiled extensive support for both households and businesses, including a whopping $71 billion wage subsidy that leaves total commitments (excluding tax deferrals and lending programs) north of 105 billion”
BC CDC website. I linked the most recent case report below. Don’t know of any time series data so you’d have to assemble that yourself
Actuaries are very much aware that someone who’s now 82 is likely to be around for a while longer. What’s your point?
Right, I know of some people with probable cases that did the self assessment and it told them they didn’t need to have a test, and just self quarantine at home, which they are doing. They don’t make it on to statistics.
Seems like they only want to test if it would change the management of the case. Given that, it might be better to track hospitalizations, ICU, death rates for an indication of number of cases.
I covered this in a previous post. 85 year old can expect to live another 7 years
It’s not news that older people are most vulnerable
Hey guys, just checking in. I like the new term “Physical Distancing” over “Social Distancing”
Anyways, By request, COMICS:
One of the questions I keep thinking about w/r to interest rates, is what happens if they actually get inflation? With the lack of temporary foreign workers to actually pick stuff in the States (right now is actually a prime picking season in parks of California for some stuff like Strawberries, Lemons, Avocados, Cabbage, Celery), at some point these things are going to become a lot more expensive.
What do central banks start doing then if we start seeing 5%+ inflation?
patriotz: “That’s life expectancy at birth, and it doesn’t mean that people are more likely to die at a certain age. It’s just an average.
So someone who is already 82 has a life expectancy beyond that.”
Try telling that to an actuary when they’re calculating your pension. The fact remains the median age of covid death is 85.
That’s life expectancy at birth, and it doesn’t mean that people are more likely to die at a certain age. It’s just an average.
So someone who is already 82 has a life expectancy beyond that.
Well, there you go. Eighteen months to two years of COVID impacts on the economy will definitely affect the housing market in multiple ways. If the economy is depressed for that long I’d say there will be a lot more must sellers and fewer qualified buyers. Will it last that long in BC? My best guess at this point, and unless we get testing, tracing and quarantine sorted, is that this is the most likely scenario.
I’m not really sure what to make of the report on Global news yesterday regarding the median age of death from covid. 85 sounds like it’s right in line with mortality statistics.
Life expectancy varies in B.C. health regions, with Vancouver Coastal leading the way at 82.4 years for men and 86.4 years for women.
The Northern Region sees the lowest average life expectancy at 77.4 years for men and 81.9 years for women. The Island Health Region ranks in the middle of the five zones at 80.2 years for men and 84.1 years for women.
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/life-expectancy-lowest-in-northern-b-c-health-report-1.4269874
According to the BC Centre for Disease Control, the median age of people who contract the disease caused by the virus is 68, while the median age for people who die of it is 85.
https://globalnews.ca/news/6769101/seniors-homes-coronavirus/
As of March 21st, we were ahead of Ontario, but gaining at a similar rate.
Then things diverged, we’ve gone down from 20/21st rate.
Ontario has only gone up, reaching the 400 per day level in the last 2 days.
We closed off travel on the 18th.
Every other province has gone up from the 20/21st except BC.
Ontario is at 3255 infections, BC 1121.
We could easily be missing 2000 cases.
The problem is the lag time – just like with the title of your HHV article – hospital stats hide rapid changes. We have no way of knowing how many cases are in the community at this point and up to 25% are asymptomatic but contagious. Also, for those of you with family members in long-term care, if you can get your loved ones out and bring them home until this passes, this would be advisable.
Where are you finding the hospitalization data?
How is it comparing to other provinces like Ontario & Quebec? Increasing at the same rate? Slower?
I’m not looking at case data, I’m looking at hospitalization data. Which indicates not drastic undercounting of cases so far.
I’d have to agree with James, we are not doing a good job of this.
Wearing cloth masks if we can get everyone on board may reduce transmission rates by 10%. That is simply not enough to get this under control, even with social distancing and hand washing. I haven’t heard a good explanation from our health officer as to why we are not testing, tracing and quarantining – only that “it is not necessary” – which it absolutely is. We clearly need to test, trace and quarantine based on the research I’ve reviewed.
April is not going to be a good month for Canada unfortunately.
Look at else where that it is running rampant. They had nothing until suddenly it was all around them.
I just don’t understand how you can say that you can’t argue with the results.
If they tested no one, they’d have no cases, and then you couldn’t argue with the results, because we’d be getting no new cases a day! Success!
We had 2 deaths on Vancouver Island yesterday. Usually death rate is 1 to 2 % which means we either got unlucky at only 70 cases, or we have double that aren’t counted. Korea had a huge outbreak stemming from 1 patient ignoring the warnings. All you need is some dumbass thinking it’s just the flu (and there are plenty), and you end up with 8000 cases in one area like they did (and that’s with massive testing and contact tracing). What do you think would happen here with the stringent guidelines on testing?
For other coronaviruses in the common cold family, the longest that antibodies last is a year.
LeoM: Not to rain on your parade but I dont believe that they know for sure whether one gets immunity to Covid 19 for any length of time after having the virus. Put another way can you get it a second or third time a few months later? If people can repeatedly get it every few months than herd immunity will not eradicate it.
If you, or anyone else has read any compelling research on whether getting Covid gives one immunity I would love to know about it. Not saying it does not exist I just have not seen anything on it.
Leo, hope you and yours are doing well.
Eventually the authorities will begin testing everyone with an antibody serology test to determine whether or not heard immunity percentages have been achieved. A test to determine whether or not we have the virus is basically irrelevant.
Society will not return to ‘normal’ until the authorities are satisfied that herd immunity is achieved or until a vaccine is widely available, but either way we are still many months away from returning to pre-COVID-19 days.
I’m not arguing per se. Not sure why they don’t just use the testing capacity they have to test more. But numbers of hospitalizations remains low so it seems cases are relatively controlled out there. Doesn’t seem to be running rampant
I’m sorry, but the strategy is fucking stupid.
No one to test because the testing criteria is dumb. You’ve shut down travel, new cases won’t be travel related.
Pretty soon you’re going to be testing no one, and then what? Just pretend it’s not happening?
Just Renter said: “Very Interesting Information!”
Indeed!
You don’t need a Twitter account to read tweets (contrary to what some here believe), but anyways here is what Ron Butler (“RobMortgageGuy”, apparently the mortgage guy at discount broker “Butler Mortgage”?) says:
“1.
The New World of Mortgage Lending
It began today:
Not for teachers or for Loblaw’s Managers or for Police Officers with good scores
But for Realtors: don’t care what you made last 2 years we need to wait and see what you make this year before we refinance your house ”
2.
677 FICO Score: No we don’t provide mortgages for anything less than 720 today
Want a HELOC?: Oh sorry we’ve withdrawn the product
Need to consolidate debts and refinance your mortgage?: OK but we going to cut up all your credit cards and pay off your car loans ”
3.
We can’t consider your electrician income until you are back to work, or your hair stylist income, or your independent physiotherapist income or on and on and on
Now all of this does NOT apply at every bank and to every bank client
But it’s only April 2nd
12 weeks to go [when businesses are hoped to reopen, we hope]
In later brief posts he also says:
“And this is just TODAY”
…
“It’s the lenders money, it’s their decisions [not the regulators at this point]”
…
“Hey, I actually don’t blame any lender for day to day changes right now. And I don’t blame them for not publicizing them either”.
A lot of interesting other posts in that thread, from other people. I recommend reading through them.
E.g. “Like 2008/2009 again. Bankers first off the titanic. Allegedly we’re in this together.”
E.g.2 “We’ve been in a ridiculous bull market for so long that lenders can’t put much value in an agents real ability to earn. This is going to be interesting to say the least. Same thing in the ’90’s and it’s a huge wakeup call. Agents tend to work and invest in RE. All in 1 basket.”
E.g.3. “Yep, nothing more than logical, responsible lending IMO. Something we haven’t seen in decades.”
…Yikes!
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2020/04/02/no-you-didnt-just-lose-half-of-your-retirement-savings/
I feel saddened that we had two deaths on the island today; I hope not too many more to follow.
Very interesting information!
https://twitter.com/ronmortgageguy/status/1245863711408963585
Some back of the napkin math.
Using StatsCan Table 13-10-0767
3093 COVID19 cases recorded there.
246 are recorded as having required hospitalization.
That would be a hospitalization rate of 8%
However, only 1736 are actually classified as Hospitalized or Not Hospitalized. The rest are marked as Unknown or Not Stated.
If we only take the classified cases, then the hospitalization rate is 14%.
Now looking at BC data. http://www.bccdc.ca/Health-Info-Site/Documents/BC_Surveillance_Summary_April_2%20Final.pdf
There are 244 cases that have been hospitalized (22% of confirmed cases, indicating some undercounting).
At a hospitalization rate of 8% to 14%, our actual number of cases would be 1757 – 3050
Note this ignores the lag between contracting the disease and becoming hospitalized, so there is some chance that there are much more cases out there than that, but in that case we should see them hit the hospitals soon.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/04/02/COVID-BC-Hospitals-Mapped/
Some really good infographics at the above link, including how short of resources we’d be under three different scenarios (South Korea, Hubei, and Northern Italy).
Interesting to see that BC has a testing capacity of 3500 but is only testing about 1000 a day now. Dr. Henry said now that they have saturated high risk cases they don’t need to test as many anymore.
Something of an odd strategy at first glance but can’t really argue with results so far.
Hallelujah! I applaud Dr. Henry for telling the public she wasn’t opposed to cloth masks yesterday prior to the CDC announcement and while the WHO was still recommending against. I secretly believe she and Adrian Dix got tired of receiving my “informative” emails.
Looks like masks are going to be a thing in the US:
“In light of these new data, along with evidence of widespread transmission in communities across the country, CDC recommends the community use of cloth masks as an additional public health measure people can take to prevent the spread of virus to those around them,” according to the guidance, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post.”
I’m sure Canada won’t be that far behind. Wearing face masks personally drives me crazy, but I better start getting used to it.
Also:
No new cases on Vancouver Island but 2 deaths.
https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/watch-live-two-covid-19-deaths-reported-on-vancouver-island-1.24111649?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Not entirely accurate. They had an extra 800 so today that didn’t all occur today. Today was just the day they decided to include people dying outside of the hospital (ie: in care homes) into their total. One day Germany and England will do the same.
USA will likely have over 1350 by Monday.
Also, USA still has a bunch of updates left to do today.
Yikes – I’m sure I’m not the only one refreshing Worldometers several times per day…
59 new deaths in Canada today. What happened? No mention in the media yet.
Still no sign of the exponential curve tapering off:
France – 1,350 new deaths today, most of any country in 1 day, brutal.
Total over 5,700 new deaths today.
Will Floridians continue to be oblivious? I feel like an even stronger global reckoning is close.
Same. At Costco yesterday wearing masks was myself and perhaps 5% of the other people.
Makes sense to me that cloth masks may stop sick symptom less people from infecting others at the grocery store and slow transmission significantly.
And perhaps the best example we have as to whether masks make a difference is in the Czech Republic. There the growth of new infections has slowed after the government announced it was compulsory to wear something covering a part of your mouth and nose when leaving your residences – such as a home-made mask or a scarf on March 18. In just 10 days, the country went from no mask usage to nearly 100 percent usage, with nearly all the masks made at home with easily accessible materials, like old t-shirts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhNo_IOPOtU
The stats on deaths would be from infections between January 1-March 15th ish when no-one but health care workers and possibly those from Asia were wearing masks in Victoria. I transited through YVR and YYJ in mid-February and no-one but us and a few fellow passengers were wearing masks (we were coming from Asia). This is now changing, but we won’t see that reflected in a reduction of hospitalizations or deaths until maybe mid to end of month imo. Hopefully soon there will be a significant shift. I just had to go out and most were not wearing masks in Canadian Tire although they do have a controlled number of people in the store.
I have not seen many people wearing masks; actually rather rare.
I guess you haven’t been outside lately? I’ve seen lots wearing masks including probably 75% of people and staff I saw in YVR and YYJ.
Has anyone ever travelled? Pretty huge difference between Japan/Taiwan/Hong Kong and Italy/Spain to isolate the factor to masks. I’ve spent a week in Taichung, Barcelona, Milan. etc. and it’s pretty obvious when you know people that live there, and they give you a non-tourist rundown of why there would be some huge differences. When they announce a lockdown in places like Italy and Croatia people treat it as a vacation (at least to start) to go skiing….in Taiwan they listen right off the bat. In Canada we are somewhere inbetween.
In Croatia a surgeon where my cousin works thought it would be a good time to go skiing when elective surgeries got cancelled and ended up picking up COVID19 and then operated on a number of cases after 🙂
I have a Croatian friend teaching in China and he was getting codes from the government on days he could go out or not. Try sending the BC population a code on their cell that they can’t leave their house today. I am sure that would go over really well.
I’ve never been to South Korea yet so can’t comment but probably similar to Japan/Taiwan.
There is speculation Japan was sticking its head in the sand trying to pretend business as usual to save the Olympics for this year. I would be curious to see now that the Olympics have been postponed, they will ramp up their testing and realize COVID-19 may have spread more than was being reported.
Reference:
https://www.economist.com/asia/2020/03/26/covid-19-forces-japan-to-delay-the-olympics
It’s a taxable payment received from the government, right? Like EI or any other taxable payment, it gets reported to CRA.
Finally… fines (<$100K) , jail time (<one year) and enforcement for people violating the rules (just like there are for littering).
“ Canadians face fines, prison for violating physical distancing rules”
https://youtu.be/uAZt7mVcA1Y
Now can we have compulsory mask-wearing or do we have to wait until we’re like Italy or USA for that?
So, then let’s all put on masks and we can open up daycares, schools, live performances, dentists, casinos, etc, etc again?
https://twitter.com/FaheemYounus/status/1245547129831067649
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763983?resultClick=1
Super small sample size, and still requires clinical trials, but…
https://twitter.com/larrybrilliant/status/1245798976604884992
Lots of countries have low testing. We can look at other data though to see what the numbers are like
Japan – everyone wearing a mask
First case: January 10
Population: 126.8 million
Density: 336 people per square kilometer
Number of COVID deaths: 57
Canada – only health care workers wearing masks
First case: January 15
Population: 37.59 million
Density: 4 people per square kilometer
Current number of COVID deaths: 134
So despite a later first case, about 1/4 of the population, and a fraction of the density, we have had more than double the deaths so far.
Leo S said:
“This rental grant is going to expose a ton of landlords not declaring rental income.”
Ive been excitedly thinking about that too, but how exactly will they be exposed — how does revenue Canada hear about it, and more importantly is Revenue Canada allowed access to that information?
“And AirBnB getting decimated.”
In our city with already very low rental vacancies, we need more permanent long-term rental units.
Not only that, but regular buyers competing with buyers that plan to also be AirBnB operators makes purchasing all that more expensive.
I’m not shedding any tears for AirBnB operators either.
Apparently they don’t do much testing.
Only 30K tests done in Japan,
(where BC has done about 44K with 1/25th the population, http://www.bccdc.ca/about/news-stories/stories/2020/information-on-novel-coronavirus. Incidentally, BC has done about the same number of tests per capita as South Korea. BCs tests are targeted to elderly, HC workers and people with bad flu symptoms. While that’s a great strategy, it would also be great to do expand testing to more groups (mild symptoms or population in general. )
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/asia/japan-coronavirus-shinzo-abe-masks-hnk-intl/index.html
“ While the current tally stands at around 2,300 cases, Japan — a country of over 127 million people — has only tested just over 30,000, compared with 394,000 tests carried out in neighboring South Korea, which has a population of just over 51 million.”
The biggest difference imo is that everyone wears face masks right now and this has been the norm for those who are ill during flue season for decades so everyone is used to it. Handshakes and hugs are less common. Also has rates of hand-washing above those in Europe and a culture used to following government guidelines. But they may end up with escalating numbers as well and they have had some cluster outbreaks.
I am having trouble reconciling all the Covid numbers being reported by countries.
Japan is reported to have great numbers, but they are nowhere near the lockdown that Canada is at.
In the Tokyo area, there is some degree of precaution, but not all that much compared to Canada. A great many people are still commuting to workplace, taking the crowded trains, and just to give you an idea:
– some live musical performances are still happening
– regular medical workers (like dentists) have never had to close, have been business as usual this whole time
– daycares are operating
– schools are said to possibly be opening again next week
– pachinko parlors (gambling) are business as usual.
One pachinko parlor chain put a sign out front of one location, explaining that they’re battling covid-19 by — get this — turning off a portion of their exterior lighting! Can you imagine if Great Canadian Casinos stayed open but only turned off some awning lights? https://soranews24.com/2020/04/02/pachinko-parlor-has-weird-way-of-combating-covid-19-that-does-nothing-about-swarms-of-customers/
And don’t forget, Japan has a very large elderly population. I know the country has a very strong work ethic, and illness has traditionally seldom been an excuse to miss work and let down the team, but covid-19 doesn’t respect cultural boundaries.
I mention all this, because despite widespread occurences in Japan that would cause outrage in Canada, Japan is reporting better covid-19 rates. What gives?
Is Canada taking the wrong approach, and in the process unnecessarily causing grave domestic economic damage? Or are Japan’s numbers severely underreported?
I know, but many things are being deferred into the fall now. Mortgages, rents, taxes, utility payments, etc. Eventually when they all start having to be paid again that will be another shock right around the time when CERB expires.
The interest that hasn’t been paid during the deferral period continues to be added to the outstanding principal of the mortgage. It doesn’t come due in six months. My understanding is that when the payments start again, the mortgage payment might be based off the total amount the borrower then owes to pay off your mortgage in accordance with the original payment schedule. This should not cause a second wave of forced sales, although permanent job loss might.
Banks calling HELOCs at this time would be a public relations and economic disaster with little up side – government would probably step in to regulate/prohibit this. Doubt we would see this longer term unless we have a major drop in house prices along with really slow recovery.
Hate to ask this question but how many less deaths under each curve?
This rental grant is going to expose a ton of landlords not declaring rental income.
And AirBnB getting decimated.
Every epidemic has a silver lining.
Yeah I saw Ben’s tweet as well. Some things come to mind.
This is what the bank of canada and regulators have been warning about for years. Overleveraged consumers represent a key risk in the case of an economic shock, and the potential is there for any recession to be amplified due to cascading bankruptcies. I’m happy they didn’t listen to the industry lobbyists and continued restricting credit since the days of 40 year 0 down mortgages in 2008.
Also with all these mortgage deferrals, the debt still has to be paid. In 6 months when they expire it might be a second wave of forced sales.
Leo S, wondering what your thoughts are on this…
Italy stopped flights from China early, January 31. Its just not an effective response as we now see from the US and Italy
Sorry, meant cases. Wrote deaths.
Now we all understand 🙂
1382 Scoular
MLS 423 875
Top and bottom of house are rental units. Top vacated, bottom still tenanted.
So if I was a buyer looking for a SFH for my family, and wanting the whole house, am I going to buy? Nope, I can’t evict the tenant so whole house isn’t mine.
But what if they buy and just wait till this blows over and then evict them…? Possibly, but they now have a tenant they didn’t originally want and don’t even know if they can or will continue to pay rent… and if they don’t, there is nothing the new landlord can do.
What if the buyer is ok having a tenant to help pay for the mortgage (which they need)? There is nothing that assures the tenants currently are, or will continue to be able to pay the rent. Mind you, they can get that $500.
How about as an investor? Plan is to buy and rent out the top as well and now have two income producing suites…. except they might not, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Talk about a terrible situation. Too much risk in this sale in my opinion. Will be interested to see how this one works out.
The way things are going in the US they are fixing to have a worse outbreak than Italy. At current rates of US growth it may not be long before they have higher rates of coronavirus than Italy.
Build that wall!!!
+1
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeating/2020/03/12/italy-banned-flights-from-china-before-americait-didnt-work/#72f43ff4481b
Another reason the death rate in Italy is so high is because initially the Italian hospital administration moved positively tested COVID-19 patients onto general wards with other sick patients, then those sick patients caught COVID too, and tragically many died.
Another major reason for Italy’s infection rate is because very early on, when Trump stopped all flights from China, the Chinese tourists went to Italy instead of to the USA. Trump’s early action stopped those infected tourists from visiting the USA, but unfortunately for Italy, they visited Italy instead.
I wonder if more stratas are going to ban short term rentals. Pretty much moot in the short term, but not the long term.
A number are hitting the re-sale market as well and I have a feeling the Airbnb zoning premium will quickly evaporate for those buildings. I personally always thought AirBnb was a really bad business when you paid yourself for your time and that was before the COVID19 factor.
As for rents, yes people are completely nuts on the asking prices. I am glad I’ve always practiced my strategy of going in 10% under market value so I could have the best selection of applications. All my rents were paid yesterday and I know government is likely the last to lay off my tenants.
I have a couple of friends who went for top rents and now their tenants are moving back in with parents, etc., and vacating.
Yep the buys last Monday worked out well. But no stock picking here.
Checking out rental inventory on UsedVictoria. Tonne of inventory (I assume former AirBNB’s?) but they’re all looking for top-dollar rents. How long do you think it will take the market to adjust?
Trump just tweeted some BS and I unloaded my tsfa Suncor shares….51.5% gain in a week….luckily I wasn’t convinced by HHVers counter arguments at $16 last week 🙂
I am guessing if you buy and sell a week later it doesn’t count as day trading?
and yes I know, I made money immorally.
YeahRight
Glad to see you back at it. That made my morning.
Brilliant. On the bright side, that’s a great way to stimulate a practically non-existent economy, as those remaining alive all can get jobs as undertakers. Double bonus – with all the digging they’ll be doing, they’ll be too busy to make unsuspecting consumers any more Fiats.
Sorry, just in the mood…
Well I guess we know why the death rate in Italy was so high.
“ In early March, as the number of infected was doubling every few days, authorities allowed overwhelmed hospitals to transfer those who tested positive but weren’t gravely ill into assisted-living facilities for the elderly.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/covid-19/italy-covid-19-outbreak-lessons-1.5517520
Jesus
Hah!
Will the coronavirus kill the oil industry and help save the climate?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/01/the-fossil-fuel-industry-is-broken-will-a-cleaner-climate-be-the-result?CMP=share_btn_tw
I hope so.
I would say the Russians and Saudis saw the decreased demand for oil due to covid-19 and decided to capitalize. It was a strategic play
The cause of oil going to around $20 is the Saudi and Russian fight over market share.
That statement sums up my thoughts exactly, but what does it mean? I think it means the majority of ‘non-Must-Sellers’ will not list their property or will cancel their listing.
Then what’s left listed for sale?
Predominantly the ‘Must-Sellers’
This coming winter of 2020/21 will see a blizzard of ‘Must-Sellers’ and very few others.
wonder how many local homeowners with mortgages are laid off currently? I assume not every homeowner in Victoria has a white collar, IT or government job where they can work from home?
Just because a pandemic happening was predictable, does not mean the impact it is having on society and the economy was predictable. From what I have read it might be better to classify as a grey swan. Apparently oil falling below $20 would even be considered a grey swan event and this pandemic is the direct cause of that right now.
James isn’t reasonable to assume by flattening the curve some people will get medical attention that may not have without the flattening and therefore save lives – possibly a lot. I think that’s the reason – deaths should be less with a flatter curve otherwise what’s the point.
There is not the same amount of deaths under each curve, there is the same amount of cases. By not overwhelming the health care system we should be able to prevent more deaths.
I agree, it seems you are misunderstanding it as well 😉
About fricken time: https://globalnews.ca/news/6763036/bc-coronavirus-update-april-1/
This is NOT a black swan event,
Nassim Taleb (the author of the Black Swan) is so irritated that people call it a black swan, and rightfully so, its a white swan event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb2pXXUSzmI&feature=youtu.be
Thanks for the update! Is there anyway to determine how many listings were cancelled/ pulled off the market in March? Just curious… I’m sure many properties didn’t make it to the listing stage.
I don’t know what will happen next.
We always keep an eye on our preferred areas and there really is zero desirable new inventory in the past month. I think we are going to continue to have low inventory for a while.
On a covid note, BC put out the call to all recently retired health professionals and new grads to apply for emergency temporary registration today. They will be permitted to practice in anticipation of pandemic numbers growing.
I think the one thing people are misunderstanding is the whole flatten the curve thing.
There’s the same amount of deaths under each curve, one just happens all at once and the health care system becomes completely overwhelmed (ie: what’s been happening in Italy, where they’ve had to choose who gets a ventilator), and the other happens over a prolonged period of time so that the health care system doesn’t get overwhelmed.
Probably because US did not start implementing lockdowns until about 2-3 weeks after Italy. Also if you look at case growth and increase of death on a logarithmic scale US vs Italy, US is currently still at exponential growth at a 10x higher case load than when Italy was able to slow the exponential growth. Based on modeling I could see they might expect an amount of deaths 10x higher than Italy or at least 5x which is equivalent to the population size difference. I wouldn’t be surprised if Italy surpasses 20k deaths by the time this is over.
Personally my take on the market is unknown.
If you look at somewhere that has had very low to no interests rates for a long time there’s just Japan. (would be happy if people could point out some other places). Their stock market never recovered from the 1989 sell off, and their housing market is mighty strange compared to what you think it would be w/ very low interest rates. Houses are kind of like cars, they depreciate in value as soon as someone has lived in them. They are rarely used for longer than 20-25 years. They demolish a lot of houses. Hard to tell what 0% interest rates will bring.
Because China had an outbreak in 1 city, that they completely closed down when they had 500 documented cases. They shut down any means of getting out of the city, and barricaded people into their homes. They forcibly confined people who weren’t wearing masks, or were out and they had a fever.
37 states currently have over 500 cases. Twelve of those are getting over an additional 500 a day. What have they shut down?
The US is likely going to hit 1000 deaths a day today. This is a number that is doubling a couple times a week currently. So a week from now you have 4000 deaths a day in the States. If they even just manage to cut it off there, they still get 100 thousand deaths by the end of April.
1 week ago world wide there were 21,000 deaths. The week before that there were under 10,000.
Man, original HHV blogger was pretty arrogant. Those sure-as-shit predictions all turned out wrong…
It’s hard to predict the effects of a black swan-type pandemic that’s still increasing (rapidly) in its severity across most of the globe, along with massive economic shocks and social repercussions. I wouldn’t dare try it.
As I’ve been saying for a while now… If interest rates end up going down (they have) it’s because a bad thing is happening.
The reason we didn’t have any issues coming out of 2008 is because Canada wasn’t over extended in the same way the US was.
Time will tell if that’s still the case this time around.
Balance sheets across the country didn’t really look good going into it.
If we’re going into history, my neighbours directly across the road from me sold their place in Wynyard Saskatchewan for more than what they bought their place for here. People own and invest where the money is.
If there are 45,000 covid-19 deaths worldwide to date, with countries like China/Japan supposedly already over the worst, how do they get projections of U.S deaths alone up in the stratosphere of 100,000 to 240,000 people, including social distancing?
Is this a case of “under promise and over deliver”?
On the one hand, if it is an over-estimation it could have a positive effect on general morale and the economy (some kind of “victory”) if real numbers end up being lower by a wide margin. It could be a boost to the markets, as stocks that had much worse scenario priced in would rise, etc.
On the other hand, in that case you just know that Mr. Trump, the same man who ignored the crisis and delayed a serious response, would personally take sole credit for saving a hundred thousand lives — and would have a better chance of spending four more years making equally terrible decisions that endanger lives and the North American economies.
I’m going with the middle outcome, but with the price recovery beginning once the majority of the drastic flattening-of-the-curve measures are behind us.
I think Victoria, as a real estate market, is pretty resilient, and history bears this out. People want to live and own here—and invest here. This ain’t Saskatoon.
Plus, borrowing rates will be dirt cheap for anyone who qualifies. And, as was the case post-2008, interest rates will be low for way longer than the bears think (many, many years wouldn’t surprise me).
In case anyone was wondering about the discussion at the end of 2008. https://househuntvictoria.blogspot.com/2008/12/predictions.html
That was before I started commenting on the blog it appears.
Why U.S. Housing Bubble 2.0 Is About To Burst
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessecolombo/2020/03/31/why-us-housing-bubble-20-is-about-to-burst/#76fef5c6b765
It’s not a matter of hard to rent, just as it’s not a matter of hard to sell.
It’s a matter of how much you can get for it, and in the case of rentals, the quality of tenant you can get for a given rent and associated risk.
Speculating on future real estate values is almost never a good idea. The transaction costs are way too high.
But it again underlines the need for investment properties to make sense regardless of price appreciation. If your investment property only makes sense with rising prices it’s a bad investment in my book.
When you buy into a market when others are waiting you often get that special find that normally would not be available.
Of course when you are taking risks no one else is prepared to then
expect a better deal as you’re the only buyer.
Remember it’s a lot easier to buy than to sell.
Great post, Leo S. Your points are well taken!
Of course none of us knows for sure if prices will even fall, but assuming price declines, how does one rationalize “floors” at which price declines see resistance (like is done with other assets)? E.g. would one take 2017 values/prices as a floor under which sellers would eventually be unlikely to psychologically/financially be able to go below? Or would 2016 values make more sense (right before Victoria increases really gained steam)? Or, would carrying costs and rental impact factor in and finally start making even a bit of sense with respect to prices?
Chris said: “does it not then make sense for any holder of an investment property to bail? Better to take a 10% reduction now than be holding a hard to rent , depreciated asset in a couple of years”
One factor is that I think Victoria owners don’t understand that prices CAN fall hard. Not that they will, but that they can. “Seeing is believing”. It will be interesting to see how owners in places where hard falls have happened (Vancouver recently, and many U.S housing markets in 2008) will already understand the horror of what is possible, and how that will effect their markets.
If people do look at the statistics it would be interesting to see what happens in some of the areas that are mainly vacation/second homes. Based on last time around expect things to fall harder and stay down longer in places like the Gulf Islands, Mount Washington, Cowichan Lake etc.
This feels like it could be bigger than 2008. OTOH 2008 seemed like a pretty big deal at the time and it is only in retrospect that it is nothing more than a blip in Victoria market history. Also seems like it depends on a lot of things we have no idea about. How long till a cure/treatment? Will the virus recede over summer? If so does it come back with a vengeance in the fall.