The virus persists Boris Johnston has returned to work this morning and on first glance appears to be a far slimmer version of himself from a few weeks ago, evidence, if it was ever needed, of the severity of the personal impact of Covid-19. As at the time of writing the UK has 20,800 deaths which were based on hospital counts of those infected. This figure does not include those from nursing homes which based
Read more →What is R0 and why is it important? R0 is a statistical representation that epidemiologists use to describe how an infectious disease spreads through a population. Put simply, the average sick person, in a totally receptive population, must be able to get at least one other person sick (R0 = 1) for the disease to spread. If a disease spreads to fewer than one person, on average, an outbreak can’t happen. So, all epidemics involve
Read more →Escaping from the Lockdown In the context of global health and economic history, the Covid-19 economic impact was initially viewed as a short term problem, albeit one with serious ramifications. As the realisation of growing infection and mortality rates take hold political leaders everywhere are now starting to grapple with balancing the medical and social issues against the economic impact on their own country. There’s now a real concern about whether the medical management and
Read more →Some Perspective On The Medical Issues While daily updates in infection and mortality statistics of the virus relay its spread and impact, it is also a record of a global failure in disease control by way of alertness and population monitoring. The official one million mark of cases infected is somewhat misleading as these are the numbers of suspected cases who have tested positive for the virus. It does not include those in the global
Read more →What’s Happened on Markets in the Last Week? The Roller Coaster continued and on foot of the governmental stimulus packages, especially the expected sign off by President Trump of the US package, markets recovered some of the falls by Friday’s close. Despite this individual stock markets are still significantly down on their opening values of 1st January. As I write this update at 5.30 pm Irish time, the US Markets have added another 2% gain
Read more →The Past Week In Markets & Protective Action Against Covid-19 A few weeks ago global stockmarkets were at record highs, supported by data on the US economy which indicated continued growth ahead. But as Covid-19 made its way to Europe and the US, markets turned quickly into the fastest declines on record with extreme intermittent volatility. With worst case scenarios being extrapolated fear of a recession has moved to the forefront of many minds. The
Read more →Firstly, the health issues Much has been written on the medical and health issues of COVID-19 in recent weeks by people far more knowledgeable than I am, and much more will follow in the weeks to come. Nonetheless, there is no doubt we are going to see a huge increase in the number of cases of the virus in the coming days and weeks. This is not due to any new pattern in the spread
Read more →When people gossip, it’s always about someone else and more often than not, there’s a comment on someone’s behaviour. People watching or, more correctly, behaviour watching provides fodder for the chat magazines and the tabloids. This, in turn, has led to the huge growth in reality TV whether it’s the X-Factor, America’s Got Talent, Big Brother, Masterchef or Iron Chef (take your pick). The list goes on. There seems to be a delight in seeing
Read more →It’s that time again when many commercial organisations are looking to kickstart their year off with a big marketing event so that they can display their wares in a good light and, hopefully, generate substantial new business volumes over the coming 12 months. The Financial Services Industry is no different. In the next few weeks, if past years’ experiences are likely to be repeated, I will receive invitations by at least 6 different investment fund
Read more →In writing this piece, I’m inclined to reflect on the saying that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Everything in life has both negative and positive aspects to it. It’s just that sometimes we don’t see the negatives or if we do, we choose to ignore them in favour of the more comfortable outcome that we desire. Personal investing falls into this overall category as well. Over the many years of advising clients
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