Global Coronavirus Death Toll Nears 100k As Thousands Die In Britain & America: Live Updates

The number of new coronavirus cases confirmed worldwide climbed at a rate of roughly 85k overnight yesterday, a rate that was roughly consistent with the prior two days. That would lead scientists to believe that the global outbreak might finally have “plateaued” – word that’s been thrown a lot lately.

Unfortunately, while the number of new cases remained stable, deaths in the US and UK continued to climb. But while thousands of families bid a distant farewell to their loved ones, the Fed’s latest intervention – couched as a lifeline for small business – has sent badly beaten junk bonds on their strongest daily rally since 2009 as spreads collapsed.

Now that the Fed has apparently extinguished credit risk from the market, ensuring that thousands of “zombie” firms will continue to borrow at extremely attractive rates, allowing them to lumber on through another day as ‘moral hazard’ is extinguished. What’s worse, almost, is that no one seems to care.

With markets around the world closed for Good Friday, and millions of Christians around the world observing the holiday while stuck inside their homes, the biggest story of the day is the fact that the global death toll will likely top 100k before midnight on the East Coast of the US. Roughly 17k – about 20% – of those deaths are from the US.

Then again, it’s extremely likely that the true number of deaths has already passed that number, as more reports are finding that Americans are almost certainly being left out of the counted dead, just like many Italians and Chinese probably were.

With Easter just two days away, the notion of reopening the American economy before the holiday now seems laughable. But with millions of Americans struggling to hang on without their jobs or the unemployment promised by states, Congress and the president, the administration appears to still be working diligently on its plan to start reopening the economy by the beginning of next month.

The news was met with the same hysterical warnings by health experts and anxious liberals insisting that a “premature” reopening would be disastrous because restrictions have barely had time to work. Of course, these sample people spent Thursday celebrating the wisdom of Dr. Anthony Fauci after he lowered his expectations for American fatalities by 75% from 240k to just 60k.

We’re not trying to criticize the good doctor, or assign blame; we’re merely trying to make the point that starting to plan out the eventual reopening of the economy is probably prudent, and by May 1, most of the US will have been shut down for almost 6 weeks. Even with money from the government, the $1,200 stimulus checks plus ramped up unemployment benefits still won’t be enough to save millions of Americans from the worst effects of the coming depression.

In New York, deaths have soared over the past week, but the unfortunate upside of that is that space in the city’s hospitals has opened up pretty rapidly. The Javits Center, which has been converted to a COVID-19 hospital, is almost empty, as is the USNS Comfort, the Navy ship docked at Manhattan’s Pier 90. While contract workers have been brought on the bury the dead victims on Hart Island, Cuomo says that the curve may already be starting to flatten – but, of course, that doesn’t mean we should let up on the social distancing measures.

Elsewhere, the feud between Taiwan and the WHO is getting so bitter as the NGO continues to ignore the amazing success Taiwan has had containing the outbreak. President Trump’s harsh words for the WHO have prompted many Taiwanese to praise Trump, even as American liberals – the same ones who purportedly supported the Hong Kong protesters – cringe. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has accused the Taiwanese government of trying to smear him.

Meanwhile, in the latest sign that the Trump administration’s heavy-handed approach to handling Iran is working, the regime said it plans to accelerate the privatization of certain state-run assets as the Trump administration moves to block $5 billion of IMF aid that it has asked for.

As Japan confronts a surprising resurgence in new cases, it’s looking like it’s not the only East Asian nation having trouble containing the outbreak as a ‘second wave’ looms over the Continent. Even as Abe struggles against the strictures of the Japanese Constitution, which protects individual liberty to an extremely high degree, a big data analysis shared by WaPo shows Tokyo’s state of emergency (a state of emergency has been declared by Abe in 7 prefectures, but most of the restrictions are voluntary) is having an impact on life in one of the world’s busiest cities. But it’s still far from having the kind of effect needed to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Malaysia has once again extended its national lockdown for two weeks as the country tries to slow the rate of coronavirus infection. As a result of this second extension, the restrictions on daily life and business will run until April 28. At 4,346, Malaysia has the highest number of confirmed cases in southeast. Asia and counts 70 deaths. Indonesia, meanwhile, reported 219 new cases of coronavirus and 26 new deaths, bringing its confirmed-case total to 3,512 and 306 deaths. The Indonesian government has already publicly acknowledged lying about the outbreak, and it’s extremely likely that the virus is far more widepsread in the country of more than 200 million.

In Spain, figures released on Friday showed that 15,843 people have died so far after contracting coronavirus in the country, with 605 of them in the last 24 hours. That compares with a peak of 950 daily deaths just over a week ago and is the lowest death toll for over two weeks. But such figures are likely to undercount the number of mortalities, since they include only proven rather than probable cases of Covid-19, the illness caused by coronavirus.

Before we end, as Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot tries to convince residents of her hard-hit city to follow the ‘social distancing’ directives, she shared a story with one interviewer about personally breaking up what she described as “an underage drinking party” on the North Side of the city.

“We pulled by and I told the driver, ‘Back up,’ [and] rolled down the window,” she said, before telling the group: “Hey, you’re too close. Separate yourself. Social distancing!'”