Englund

Georgia didn’t invent this fast response. There was a checklist to follow: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 224-page Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Response Plan, known as the Red Book.  For 15 years, the Red Book has laid out how to detect bird flu, cull affected birds and prevent further spread. Unfortunately, bird flu is no longer confined to birds. Last March it was identified in cows for the first time. Scientists have long considered bird flu, or H5N1, a leading candidate for causing a human pandemic. New York Times 20 February 2025 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/opinion/bird-flu-farmers-dairy.html Bird Flu - Fågelvirus https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/bird-flu-fagelvirus.html

With so much H5N1 virus circulating across the U.S., scientists worry we are a few mutations away from a potential human pandemic Wall Street Journal 17 February 2025 https://www.wsj.com/health/bird-flu-cows-cats-human-transmission-7adf14ec Bird Flu - Fågelvirus https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/bird-flu-fagelvirus.html Tillbaka till Rolfs länktips 18 Februari 2025 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/rolfs-lanktips-18-februari-2025.html

  A second strain of H5N1 avian flu was recently detected among dairy cows in Nevada, a sign that the outbreak could be harder to rein in than previously thought.  A Nevada dairy worker exposed to infected cows also tested positive for the strain, federal health officials said. The new variant of H5N1 bird flu is distinct from the strain previously spreading in U.S. cows, but it has been circulating broadly in wild birds in North America. The variant previously detected in dairy herds is known as B3.13. Herds across 16 states have been infected, and this variant has been responsible for most human cases.  The recent H5N1 infections among cattle and the dairy worker in Nevada were caused by the D1.1 genotype.  That same variant in 2024 likely infected some 15 people in five states, the CDC said. Most cases in people have been mild, regardless of the variant.  Wall Street Journal 11 February 2025 https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/bird-flu-h5n1-risks-explained-...

  US egg prices are soaring to record highs as farmers are forced to slaughter millions of chickens  in an attempt to halt the spread of bird flu, which has ripped through the nation’s poultry barns in recent months. “While bird flu has come and gone in waves over the past few years, this current outbreak is the most severe yet, with no signs of slowing,”  Financial Times 12 February 2025 https://www.ft.com/content/6badcd10-c9b6-4067-8943-7199ad332cbb Bird Flu Pandemic - Fågelvirusinfluensa - and other pandemics https://internetional.se/pandemic.htm Så ska forskare skapa supervaccin mot influensa – Om man lyckas utveckla ett vaccin som ger ett bredare skydd inkluderar det även virus man inte träffat på tidigare, däribland virus som kan komma att orsaka pandemier, säger Hélène Englund, epidemiolog vid Folkhälsomyndigheten. DN 26 augusti 2014 https://www.dn.se/nyheter/vetenskap/sa-ska-forskare-skapa-supervaccin-mot-influensa/ Svininfluensan går nu in i sin värsta fas. Minst...

  Mpoxpatient i Sverige – första utanför Afrika Det första fallet av sjukdomen mpox av den mer allvarliga varianten har konstaterats i Sverige, meddelar socialminister Jakob Forssmed (KD) på en pressträff på torsdagen. Det är det första fallet utanför Afrika. ”Det är förstås någonting vi tar på allvar”, säger Forssmed. DI 15 augusti 2024, 18:02 https://www.di.se/nyheter/mpoxpatient-i-sverige-forsta-utanfor-afrika/ Ett fall av mpox klad I rapporterat i Sverige — Folkhälsomyndigheten (folkhalsomyndigheten.se) The Sky is the limit S&P 500 erases August losses as ‘irrational recession fears’ fade - MarketWatch New York-börserna steg och såväl S&P 500 som Nasdaq  raderade ut hela augustiraset https://www.di.se/live/detaljhandelsgladje-lyfte-wall-street-sminkbolag-rusade-tvasiffrigt/ Men räntorna steg 10 Y 10 Y 3m I takt med att räntorna steg sjönk också förväntningarna på att Fed ska leverera så pass stora och snabba sänkningar som marknaden prisat in de senaste veckorna. N...

  De ledande börserna i USA bjöd på en svag stängning  efter en velig onsdagshandel.  https://www.di.se/live/svagt-uppat-pa-wall-street-underkladesbolag-rusade-pa-vd-byte/ WHO Calls Mpox a Global Health Emergency Now a mutated strain of mpox has spread to at least six African countries, infecting about 15,000 people and killing more than 500 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this year alone.  The variant was first reported in the DRC less than 12 months ago. A public health emergency of international concern applies to an extraordinary event that carries a risk via the spread of a disease across borders — one that potentially requires a coordinated response.   https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-14/world-health-organization-calls-mpox-a-global-health-emergency – Folkhälsomyndigheten följer och bevakar kontinuerligt det epidemiologiska läget, både i Sverige och internationellt.  Mpox är sedan tidigare klassad som en allmänfarlig sjukdo...

H5N1 has spread stealthily among cows. Could it also be spreading silently in humans? Given how devastating another global pandemic would be, the US should start mass testing of dairy workers for the bird flu virus that’s spreading fast through cows.  If necessary, either the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the US Department of Agriculture should pay people to get tested. The USDA’s recent call to test more cows isn’t going far enough. This week, scientists announced they’d found viral fragments in milk on supermarket shelves, with an alarming 58 of 150 samples testing positive.  Scientists initially thought that milk from infected cows was always thick and discolored, but these results show it can look deceptively normal. Bloomberg 26 april 2024 at 15:00 CEST https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-26/how-many-people-have-bird-flu-we-won-t-know-unless-we-test Bird Flu More than 40 countries across Europe, Asia and Africa have seen outbreaks https://en...

It’s threatening to drive food prices, which are near record levels, even higher and boost costs for households that are already suffering from surging prices for other commodities.  Bloomberg 11 december 2021 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-11/bird-flu-is-raging-adding-to-the-risks-for-food-inflation A bird flu called H7N9 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2017/05/a-bird-flu-called-h7n9.html The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic Time Magazine, 4 May 2017 https://www.internetional.se/pandemic.htm#1705H7N9 Polio upptäckt i avloppsvatten: ”Lokala utbrott kan få stora följder” Expressen TV 12 augusti 2022 https://www.expressen.se/tv/nyheter/polio-upptackt-i-avloppsvatten-lokala-utbrott-kan-fa-stora-foljder/  

“black swan,” used to describe high-profile, but hard-to-predict and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations The phrase is sometimes used to describe the economic meltdown of 2008. Because of their character, it is suggested there’s not much we can do to avert them. Yet a recent article in the world’s best magazine, The Economist of London, challenges the focus of many pundits and analysts on black swans. “This kind of thinking makes things worse by encouraging fatalism, rejecting accountability, and giving the nod to short-termism and willful ignorance.”  We should be thinking more, The Economist suggests, about “gray rhinos.” In the world of government and policy, gray rhinos are “highly likely, high-impact risks that are a matter of when, not if,” the article states. Gray rhinos are a “metaphor for missing the big, obvious thing that’s coming at you.”  https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2021/01/kelman-covid-black-swans-gray-rhinos.aspx?m=1 Nicholas Nassim Ta...

Fallet tilltog strax innan klockan 16 när Wall Street vände nedåt.  OMXSPI gick från att vara upp drygt 0,3 procent vid 15.30 till att nu handlas ned drygt 1 procent. Maria Van Kerkhove, teknisk chef på WHO, konstaterar samtidigt att det fortfarande är för tidigt att dra några slutsatser kring hur allvarlig sjukdom de som smittas drabbas av.  Tidiga rapporter har indikerat milda symptom, men de slutsatserna har enligt WHO-toppen baserats på klusterutbrott bland universitetsstudenter som tenderar att vara unga och friska. DI 3 december 2021 https://www.di.se/live/plotsligt-fall-pa-varldens-borser-stockholmsborsen-pa-minus/

 Tooze leaves the reader with a clear sense of foreboding: about our preparedness for the next crisis, and about its imminence. It’s a warning we should take seriously. Tooze’s implication is clear: The West has no systematic ability to prevent or effectively fight large-scale crises. Our political systems are broken by cultural division and, in Tooze’s view, hamstrung by outmoded economic principles. Robert E. Rubin, Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999, New York Times 3 September 2021 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/books/review/adam-tooze-shutdown.html When liquidity is flushed indiscriminately into the financial system, it inflates bubbles, generating new risks and outsize gains for those with substantial portfolios. Adam Tooze New York Times 1 September 2021 https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/09/coronavirus-what-lessons-have-we.html  Committee To Save The World That was the famous 1998 Time Magazine cover featuring Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin, t...

But governments’ and central banks’ success in holding the world’s financial system together is contributing in the long run to inequality and social polarization.  It was tempting to imagine that some common threat — perhaps an alien invasion — might make a reality of the United Nations. The coronavirus, one might think, was precisely such an invasion. And yet faced with this common threat, cooperation failed. The development of Covid vaccines was a collective triumph of researchers, governments and businesses around the world. Mr. Trump’s Operation Warp Speed was the most successful of all.  Budget constraints don’t seem to exist; money is a mere technicality. The hard limits of financial sustainability, policed, we used to think, by ferocious bond markets, were blurred by the 2008 financial crisis. In 2020, they were erased. The world discovered that John Maynard Keynes was right when he declared during World War II that “anything we can actually do, we can afford.” The cen...

 In his elegiac memoir The World of Yesterday, which he wrote while in exile from the Nazis, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig observed that most people cannot comprehend the prospect of catastrophic changes in their situation.  Things can get incrementally worse for a long time without prompting a reaction. Once catastrophe strikes, it is too late to act. Climate change-induced weather events are one obvious type of catastrophe. These could render uninhabitable large, densely populated parts of the planet, and it might already be impossible to avert large-scale population movements stemming from them. Climate scientists need to integrate their work with that of political scientists, and epidemiologists should do the same with economists. Analyzing the risks of catastrophe creates the obligation to act now. Diane Coyle Project Syndicate Aug 5, 2021 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/global-catastrophes-human-perception-and-action-by-diane-coyle-2021-08 Diane Coyle, Pr...

Yet Europe’s internal borders remain wide open. The imperative of saving this year’s tourist season has paralysed political leaders. The ECB has been funding the entire budget deficits of the Latin bloc throughout the pandemic, drawing a veil over the underlying deterioration of sovereign debt profiles.  The Banco de España says Spain’s debt has jumped 30 percentage points to 125pc of GDP since Covid arrived. Portugal has hit 137pc. Italy is flirting with 160pc of GDP this year. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 6 July 2021 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/06/europes-fourth-covid-wave-freighted-political-consequences/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/07/07/eurozone-panic-delta-variant-escalates/

Klara och tydliga diagram https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnSEiQmDP2Y

DN publicerade på måndagen en unik kartläggning om vilka det är som hittills har dött i covid-19 i Sverige. Låginkomsttagare, lågutbildade och utrikesfödda från vissa länder är starkt överrepresenterade bland de avlidna.  https://www.dn.se/sverige/unik-kartlaggning-har-ar-de-som-dott-i-covid-i-sverige/ Vi fick tidigt dessa signaler, till exempel att det var en stor dominans av utrikesfödda på Iva (intensivvården, reds anm). Det gällde framför allt personer födda i Mellanöstern och Afrikas horn.   Den enskilt viktigaste riskfaktorn för dödlighet i covid-19 är dock ålder. Skillnaderna i risk är påtagliga. Bara en promille av de döda, 16 personer, var under 30 år. De allra flesta döda, 72 procent, finns i åldersgruppen 80 år och äldre. – Ingen som jag har pratat med kan komma på någon sjukdom som är så extremt åldersberoende. DN 23 mars 2031 https://www.dn.se/sverige/tegnell-tydligt-att-socioekonomi-spelar-stor-roll/

Most of Italy is in lockdown again. France has imposed a disguised lockdown for another month in greater Paris, where critical care beds are saturated and the South African variant is nearing a tenth of cases. The variant is above 30pc in hotspots in western France. AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD Telegraph 19 March 2021 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/03/19/europes-tourist-season-jeopardy-cost-vaccine-failure-keeps-rising/

https://voxeu.org/article/helicopter-money-another-pandemic-recession-venice-1630

  The US Treasury has decided not to extend several emergency lending facilities set up by the Federal Reserve at the start of the coronavirus pandemic FT 20 November 2020 https://www.ft.com/content/e4b3a063-db44-4e6c-b998-74a29d70b136 Mnuchin’s Fed move is like stripping Titanic of its lifeboats, economist says https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/20/weinberg-mnuchins-fed-move-is-like-stripping-titanic-of-its-lifeboats.html

as the flu and a vaccine might not be able to stop it, top UK scientist says CNBC OCT 20 2020  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/20/covid-19-likely-to-become-as-endemic-as-flu.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/20/oecds-gurria-we-are-just-starting-to-walk-into-the-woods.html The threat of long economic Covid looms We know that many businesses have been hurt, as demand for their output collapsed or they were locked down. The second waves of the disease now crashing on to many economies will make this worse. As the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report shows In a crisis of this scale, there is only one entity able to act as both insurer and supporter of demand. Unfortunately, the capacity of governments to act varies hugely.  But those with globally accepted currencies have enormous room for manoeuvre.  Martin Wolf 20 October 2020 https://www.ft.com/content/f9a0c784-712e-4bf9-b994-55f8d63316d9