Next Steps in Chinese COVID Virus Battle

Small businesses, people who are not eligible for unemployment and starving, and all major business, economic, and even the majority of political leaders have come to a realization that if the economy does not start up in some fashion by June, there will be nothing left. There is no amount of printed money and hard work that will patch it up. It will be bread lines and years of depression. Technically, what will happen is this will evolve from a break in the supply chain problem, to a liquidity problem. That means that bankruptcies and non payments will extend beyond a 2-3 month break, and start pressuring weaker financial institutions. If they begin to fall, its hard not to picture a domino effect that sweeps the nation.

I try hard to be apolitical, and am a firm centrist but with a healthy distrust for government and a belief in the hard work and innovation of Americans. I believe we have president with whom I don’t agree with the approach in many cases. However, If I worked at Apple, Dell and Microsoft early on I would tell you the exact same thing about those leaders. I have worked with numerous people like that in an executive team at a Fortune 100 company, and am somewhat immune to the noise and bluster. Just judging outcomes, I see 4 major phases that have been dealt with in unthinkable short order. First we eliminated travel from China. Its now known they intentionally covered up the virus for weeks, and most likely propagated the virus from a lab, not a wet market. Stopping their population, who we know was significantly infected, was a huge milestone. Second, we had to have more beds to treat the ill as we would be overwhelmed. That was answered with a parallel of many different solutions, and we are now dismantling many of the extras we built. Third, we had to fix a projected shortage of ventilators, which was done in record time, especially given their complexity. Of course biggest of all we had to, as a nation, flatten the curve, which has now happened. As a bonus, our much maligned health care system did such an amazing job that the death rate of diagnosed that this rate has come in under 4%, and will likely head lower. Compare this to our first world friends in Europe and you see we are the leader in the world.

So what comes next: three simple, yet critical and complicated milestones. First, all the resources and innovation need to execute rapid and whole scale testing. We have all gained massive confidence in our health care leaders, who after this will be awarded medals and cold hard cash, and if we get these rock stars more data, they are going to evolve and knock this virus in the dirt. We hear talk of this but have not seen real stats showing exponential improvement yet. Nirvana here is any of us drive to a local or hospital, or even Walmart, and get a free drive through test with result within 2-3 days.

Next is deployment of enhanced therapies for those diagnosed. This is already in action, and trials should be done within 2 months. With cut back of regulations, this will almost surely happen rapidly.

And of course lastly, a vaccine. Deployment of this will end the threat. With the money behind this, the result is almost a given and the question is when.

If you can isolate all the other noise, including politics and the media, China and WHO, the impacts of the lockdowns, what you really need to gauge are those three things. The sooner they are done, the sooner they can mow the yard and re-open the Best Western just down the street from me.

Take care, stay safe, and if you have an extra penny or two, support a local business any way you can.