Good morning everyone, I hope everything is going well. It’s a foggy morning here in Romania, which can be called a trademark of Eastern Europe. It reminds me of when I landed in Vienna during my first trip from Japan, and also Sofia, where I killed time before coming to Romania. Also, it makes me think of the poor visibility of the world situation.
As winter is coming, I ordered a broom online to clean my garden. The online shopping industry is dramatically improved in Bucharest thanks to the pandemic. You get anything delivered within 2 hours after placing an order. However, the problem is if I should sanitize the delivered products or not. I used to leave it under the sunlight for about one hour. It is known that 90% of SARS-CoV-2 is deactivated by sunlight at noon of summer solstice within 7 minutes. Unfortunately the daylight saving time ended this weekend, and the daytime is becoming shorter and shorter. My cats are getting curious about the broom. Now that is the problem.
Actually this goes beyond the broom. Recently cafes in Bucharest deliver one cup of coffee and one piece of cake. It means they have to do so in order to survive. On the other hand, the stores which marked the largest growth this year do not deliver. It makes us wonder if going online is not the right way to go. Probably because European countries interrupted lockdown once, the unemployment rate is not skyrocketing here yet. However in fact every single economic indicator is showing the catastrophic crisis coming. By comparing the drop of GDP, etc., the so-called “Coronavirus shock” is estimated to be 10 times worse than the Lehman shock in 2009. If you ask how long the world economy took to recover from the Lehman shock, an optimistic person would say 10 years, and a pessimistic person would say it didn’t recover. It means the astronomical financial policy of each country caused the bubble economy in the stock market but the actual growth of the economy disappeared over the past 10 years. If we pick up the optimistic number of 10 years, because Coronavirus shock is 10 times worse than 2009, the economic recovery would take 100 years. Nobody talks about this in the economist industry but probably it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes.
By March and April, when lockdown started in most countries, it was predicted that most airline companies would go bankrupt by the end of May. Actually it didn’t happen thanks to the huge governmental aid, but if we ask them if there is any prospect to return the aid, probably none of those companies would say yes at least at this moment. The industries that were deteriorated the worst because of Covid-19 are reportedly the travel industry, automobile industry, and financial industry. Entertainment industry is also strongly related to the travel industry and also the immigration industry is a part of the travel industry. Last week, a famous Romanian rock singer ranted on TV. He claimed that Covid-19 is a fake. The female news reporter, who is supposed to be a neutral journalist, was upset and refuted with the logical point of view. It was funny. Now the situation is harsh for the rockstars too. When you check instagram, another rockstar in his 60s, Nikki Sixx did not come out of his cottage in the State of Wyoming with his newborn baby, and his musician fellows kept on whining to say let’s go on a tour.
If it takes 100 years to recover from the first wave, the damages from the second wave and the third wave are going to be added on top. This is why I couldn’t help associating the foggy morning to the world situation. Now we haven’t seen the disastrous unemployment rate and GDP is rebounding, but maybe this is like a chopped head still has consciousness for a few seconds. Probably because there is nothing else for the traders to buy, the stock prices of Apple and Google are surging since this Spring. However, for example, Google replies on the advertisement expense of the local businesses. If the local businesses cut the advertisement cost, Google will also decrease the revenue.
In addition to this economic impact, we suffer the biological impact of Covid-19 for sure. This is where we are. When I look back on my own life, the most important thing in hard times is not to lose sanity. Jack Sparrow said so too. Staying sane is absolutely important. Sanity is reason. In other words, this is the function of the frontal lobe. Then what is insanity ? It’s the excessive blood stream to amygdala. Amygdala is a small organ located on both sides of our head, and it causes unreasonable anxiety or fear. When this organ has an excessive amount of blood stream, one gets full of anxiety. Anxiety and fear are also emotions. Patients who lose emotions after the brain surgery can still think and analyze, but cannot decide according to research. Emotions are most likely our engine as a life. However the engine needs control. The control is in the frontal lobe. Frontal lobe is known to supervise amygdala. When one thinks verbally and logically, frontal lobe obtains more blood stream and regains the control over amygdala. In short, we get back to sanity. It’s been long, but this is why I do analysis. Coronavirus is dangerous, the economy is harmed. It’s a chaotic state of mind. How much risk can be reduced if you do this. How much infection risk gets increased if you stay in a residential area for 10 more minutes, how much of mortality can be reduced if you finish your work one hour early and go to the park. Thinking quantitatively helps us see the things clearer through the mist.
I’ve heard that the public inspectors who provide PCR tests in Japanese airports cannot be tested. The economic indicators are officially manipulated in Japan as well. This is out of question, it’s only a denial. However, evaluating the risk rationally would let each one of us step forward.
