On 30 December 2019, at 20,31, the Spanish press agency EEE put the news online that, in the infectious disease department of the Gomez Ulla hospital in Madrid, seven patients, hospitalized for pneumonia, do not react to the usual therapies. After a week, spent in a crescendo of alarming news, it is now clear that it is a new virus, which the Madrid researchers baptize cetrovirus, due to its scepter shape. Meanwhile, the diagnosed cases rise to 63 and there are the first three deaths.
In mid-January the disease spreads in Barcelona, Valencia, Granada and other minor Spanish cities. The European authorities then decide to put the whole of Spain under quarantine: 47 million people are isolated from the rest of the world. Too late: returning from the Christmas holidays, some people had time to bring the cetrovirus with them and on 18 January the first cases of contagion were registered in London, Paris and Rome.
The Bloomberg agency, which has given great and pounding prominence to this epidemic from the beginning, reports that Russia has closed its borders with Europe; Toyota has suspended production in its British plants (perhaps also because with Brexit it no longer knows who to sell cars to); American Airlines, Delta and Etihad have canceled all flights to and from the European Union; China begins to repatriate its fellow citizens (the most impressive airlift in history).
The hospital capacity of Madrid quickly becomes saturated and the Iberian government decides to build a new hospital. But he struggles to find where, because every time he identifies a site, local committees are formed which organize demonstrations against the establishment in their neighborhood of a health facility that should house the infected. Eventually the protests do fall the already precarious executive.
I financial markets they remain relatively calm. They are not concerned at all about the possible consequences on the world economy. Perhaps because the Eurozone now contributes less than 5% to global growth, compared with 12% for the USA and 40% for China. So the stock exchanges continue to break records. Alone European bank stocks plummet, because the ECB reduces the rate on deposits to -0,8% and triples the securities purchase programme, with the aim of preventing the new recession that is looming due to the fragile situation of the single currency. The euro collapses at 0,8 against the dollar (-28% in a few sessions), despite President Trump railing against Frankfurt's currency manipulation and threatening to put new duties on goods imported from the EU.
The transposition from China to Europe of the events that took place in these first five weeks of 2020 does not appear exaggerated. Spain has 11 million fewer inhabitants than Hubei, the province whose capital is Wuhan, from where the new coronavirus spread. Compared to the rest of the Eurozone, the Spanish population weighs almost 14% and the economy 12%. Hubei, on the other hand, accounts for 4% of both the Chinese population and GDP. In other words, treat Spain as if it were the whole EurozoneAs absurd as it may seem, it is even more appropriate than considering Hubei as the whole of China. But that's what the world's media and governments have been doing for a month now, now guided only by polls.
It's worth adding that between 290 and 650 fatal flu victims each year (World Health Organization data), but no one cares about it. The coronavirus is part of the flu strain. Someone speaks of a new Spanish threat, which in 1918 caused between 20 and 100 million deaths worldwide (depending on the source). But there is also no comparison between now and then in terms of nutrition, promiscuity, hygiene, health care, medicines, the ability to inform the population.
So it's good Fabrizio Galimberti to say that that "perfect storm" will not happen in today's reality. Instead he seems to underestimate the consequences, in terms of human lives, of what he calls "very useful and very justified paranoia".
In fact, the borderline reaction of media hysteria and the measures taken by governments around the world against China are seriously affecting global growth. The disruption to value chains, the halt to the movement of people and the loss of wealth (a few trillions of dollars have evaporated with the fall of the stock markets) risk cutting a not insignificant portion of world GDP. One point of growth less in China means 0,4 points less global income (-542 billion dollars, as if the entire Swiss economy disappeared).
In some areas of the Earth that would mean further poverty. How many more people will die of malnutrition and disease that the shortage of food brings with it? In short, hunger will kill them more than the new virus. In addition to the immunosuppressive effects on the 140 million hypochondriacs in the world.
On the other hand, when the health minister of the sixth advanced country proudly declares that Italy is the only nation in Europe to have stopped air flights with China, we are hopeless.
