UK Coronavirus Infections Trend Trajectory Worse than Italy Government PANICs! Sterling Collapses!

By: Nadeem_Walayat

Finally Britain's schools are going to close on Friday the 20th of March, a good 2 weeks later than they should have and 1 week later than I forecast they would do over a month ago! As the government had been following the mad scientist doctrine of wanting to spread the virus via those most able to withstand and survive infection i.e. children who thankfully are being spared by the coronavirus. Who were expected to go on to infect their parents and thus eventually approximately 60% of the UK population would reach herd immunity and bring the outbreak to an end.

A protocol that I for several weeks have been warning was a recipe for disaster that would result in anywhere from 400,000 deaths to 1.4 million UK deaths, far beyond anything any other nation has experienced as illustrated by my following video -

The government had been following this protocol because it's the cheapest and fastest way out of the Coronavirus crisis as saving lives costs time and money!

However, following much outcry from a myriad of medical institutions who painted a stark picture for Britain if it continued along the 'Herd Immunity' path that the number of deaths would number in the hundreds of thousands. Thus prompting a public about turn as an out of his depth Boris Johnson swung in the other direction, promising to test upwards of 25,000 people per day as being the only effective means of managing the outbreak by identifying those infected and then quarantining them, though the current rate of testing is barely above 5,000 per day..

The UK currently has capacity for 5000 ICU beds of which 80% are already populated, the objective is about half of these will be vacated by the 15th April with a planned 5000 more coming on stream to total 10,000, and then a further 30,000 high dependency beds to be made available, thus the UK should be in a position to cope with about 30,000 seriously ill and approximately 8,000 critically ill patients by late April.

Unfortunately government incompetence and negligence in NOT having taken the pandemic seriously enough by wasting the whole of February, and only really starting to act in the wake of financial panic and street panic as shoppers fearing a shutdown France and Italy style panic shopped, clearing supermarkets of all of their produce literally leaving nothing on the shelves!

That prompted stores to implement policies of first 1 to 3 items per customer of certain high demand products, that today has changed to no more than 2 of ANY item per customer so as to bring a halt to he panic buying that began with the world wide obsession for toilet paper as if it seemed to offered some magical protection against Covid-19.

Whilst the Bank of England attempted to stem economic collapse by cutting UK interest rates to an all time low of just 0.1%! With the bigger story being monetizing of £250 billion of government debt that hastened the collapse of the sterling which had been falling since last weeks rate cut to 0.25% and in the wake of government promises to spend as much as it would take to support the economy during the Coronavirus collapse.

As the government promised to offer imminent grants and loans to prevent companies from going bust and laying off workers as the people of Britain were urged to adopt social distancing so as to slow down the rate of infections that are literally going parabolic as I have been warning of for several weeks.

UK Coronavirus Trend Forecast Update

The total number of infections continues to exceed my trend forecast on a parabolic curve, exceeding my forecast by 350%. My original forecast as of 14th Feb 2020 was for the number of infections to target a parabolic trend from 9 at the time to 5000 by the end of March 2020. The actual trend trajectory now suggests that the UK is heading for more than 17,000 officially recorded infected numbers by the end of March!

Whilst the number of deaths at 144 exceeds my forecast by over 800%, which puts Britain on a worse trajectory to where Italy was at this stage barely 2 weeks ago! So does not bode well for what is about to transpire that I am sure will spark even more panic amongst the general population as this now implies that the UK could be heading for over 750 deaths by the end of March 2020!

So it looks like "Herd Immunity" is no longer on the menu, though following that plan up until the end of last week means that the damage has already been done. Where I now would not be surprised if Britain's death toll over the next 3 months could exceed 50,000! Never mind the chaos of having upwards of 2 million people ill trying to get any kind of treatment from an NHS that would be in a state of collapse.

ALL of which was avoidable as South Korea illustrates, not only that but Britain had advance warning from China, South Korea and then Italy of what was coming so had plenty of time to prepare for, instead Boris Johnson's government listened to mad scientists with their herd immunity doctrine.

Thus the UK has been giving advice to the elderly and weak to self quarantine themselves for the next 3 months as I suspect the "herd Immunity" protocol has not really gone away, just watered down a little so as to make the death toll lower and more palatable to the general population than anything in the region of 400,000 to 1.4 million. Therefore likely targeting as death toll of at least 50,000.

CoronaVirus Stocks Bear Market Trend Forecast Implications and AI Stocks Buying Levels

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Nadeem Walayat

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Nadeem Walayat has over 30 years experience of trading derivatives, portfolio management and analysing the financial markets, including one of few who both anticipated and Beat the 1987 Crash. Nadeem's forward looking analysis focuses on UK inflation, economy, interest rates and housing market. He is the author of five ebook's in the The Inflation Mega-Trend and Stocks Stealth Bull Market series that can be downloaded for Free.

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