Reuters (May 27)
Covid-related restrictions “have battered the world’s second-biggest economy even as most countries have been seeking to return to something like normal.” Although “China’s economy is now staggering back to its feet,” the recovery remains “grinding and partial… with businesses from retailers to chipmakers warning of slow sales as consumers in the country slam the brakes on spending.”
Tags: Battered, Businesses, China, Chipmakers, Consumers, Covid, Economy, Grinding, Normal, Partial, Recovery, Restrictions, Retailers, Sales, Staggering, Warning
Bloomberg (May 24)
“For decades, the surest way for ordinary Chinese families to grow their wealth and guarantee future financial stability was to put most of their money into real estate, and the rest into the stock market. Now, even those with money to spare are clutching onto their cash, not willing to take a chance in the Covid-battered Chinese economy.”
Tags: Battered, Cash, Chance, China, Clutching, Covid, Families, Financial stability, Future, Guarantee, Money, Ordinary, Real estate, Spare, Stock market, Wealth
The Guardian (May 10)
“Tensions between Shanghai residents and China’s Covid enforcers are on the rise again, amid a new push to end infections outside quarantine zones to meet President Xi Jinping’s demand for achieving “dynamic zero-Covid.” To express their displeasure with what are increasingly being viewed as violations of human rights and the rule of law, residents are sharing incriminating videos on social media. “Censors have been taking down many of these videos, but determined residents have continued to post them.”
Tags: China, Covid, Displeasure, Enforcers, Human rights, Infections, Quarantine, Residents, Rule of law, Shanghai, Social media, Tensions, Videos, Violations, Xi
The Economist (April 30)
China cannot keep fighting a “forever war.” The nation’s “martial rhetoric will not help it defeat covid. And “victory, as Xi Jinping defines it” in terms of defeating or containing covid will only prove “an elusive goal…. Most countries have accepted that covid cannot be eradicated.” China, too, must learn “to live with the virus.”
Tags: China, Containing, Covid, Defeat, Elusive, Eradicated, Forever war, Live with, Martial rhetoric, Victory, Virus, Xi
The Guardian (March 30)
“The pandemic has changed, but the idea that it is over is false.” Last week, the UK had an estimated 4.26 million cases and hospital “admissions with Covid are only 2% below the first Omicron peak two months ago and still rising.” Nor is Covid endemic. Eventually, it probably will be, but endemic “does not necessarily mean mild,” as TB, Malaria and other endemic diseases illustrate. “Trying to ignore a disease that is still so unpredictable feels a bit like turning your back on a hungry tiger in the undergrowth.”
Tags: Admissions, Cases, Covid, Diseases, Endemic, False, Hospital, Hungry tiger, Malaria, Mild, Omicron, Pandemic, Peak, Rising, TB, UK, Unpredictable
FreightWaves (March 24)
After two years of COVID-induced havoc in global freight markets, volatility has started to abate,” but looking ahead, “the picture isn’t pretty. We think another sharp, painful downturn in the U.S. truckload market is imminent, and it could be as bad as 2019.” Rather than the usual March surge, “March volumes are softer than at any point in 2021” and appear linked “to a major consumer slowdown…. Spot rates are falling fast and volumes are dropping.”
Tags: Abate, Consumer slowdown, Covid, Downturn, Freight markets, Global, Havoc, Painful, Sharp, Spot rates, Surge, Truckload, U.S., Volatility, Volumes
Wall Street Journal (March 15)
This week, the Fed meets “to address the worst inflation in 40 years amid new risks to economic growth.” The mess is “largely of the Fed’s own making. The central bank’s inflation target is 2% for personal-consumption expenditure inflation, and the rate in February was probably three times higher.” The Fed’s “historic exertions were needed” when Covid struck, but it continued them for “too long, even as the money supply exploded and clear signs of inflation began to appear.”
Tags: Central bank, Covid, Economic growth, Fed, Inflation, Inflation target, Mess, Money supply, Personal consumption, Risks
New York Times (February 13)
“Covid has made us reconsider everything, the meaning of home and work, the value of public space, the magnitude and immediacy of death, what it truly means to be a member of a society. We are still finding the answers to those questions, but the America we knew ended in 2019.”
Tags: 2019, Answers, Covid, Death, Home, Immediacy, Magnitude, Meaning, Public, Questions, Reconsider, Society, Space, U.S., Value, Work
New York Times (January 16)
China’s zero-tolerance COVID policy has been “highly effective, but the extreme transmissibility of the Omicron variant poses the biggest test yet,” and threatens to disrupt supply chains. “The potential for setbacks comes just as many companies had hoped they were about to see some easing of the bottlenecks that have clogged global supply chains since the pandemic began.”
Tags: Bottlenecks, China, Clogged, Covid, Disrupt, Effective, Omicron, Supply chains, Transmissibility, Variant, Zero tolerance
Washington Post (January 12)
“Given the number of daily positive tests rising to record levels,” most of us will get COVID. “On Monday, the seven-day average reached more than 760,000, meaning about 1 in every 60 Americans has tested positive in the last week alone.”
Tags: Covid, Positive, Record levels, Rising, Seven-day average, Tests, U.S.
