TheChek News Flow

Trump Retweets Call for Dr. Fauci to Be Fired Over Coronavirus Comments

The member of the White House’s coronavirus task force said on CNN that the U.S. “could have saved more lives” if it had moved faster

President Trump stoked questions about the fate of Dr. Anthony Fauci after retweeting a critic who called for the member of the White House’s coronavirus task force to be fired after he said lives could have been saved if the government had acted more quickly.

Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has drawn denunciations from some on the right, who have questioned his advice and whether it helped contribute to the economy’s free fall.

Appearing on CNN on Sunday morning, Dr. Fauci said that the government “could have saved more lives” if it had moved sooner to impose social-distancing restrictions.

On Sunday evening, Mr. Trump retweeted a message from a former Republican congressional candidate attacking that comment. “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives,” wrote DeAnna Lorraine, who challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) in her San Francisco-area district.

Her message went on: “Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large. Time to #FireFauci…”

Mr. Trump didn’t repeat those words directly himself, but shared the message with his nearly 77 million followers. The retweet was one of several postings on Easter Sunday in which Mr. Trump pushed back on criticism he has faced over his handling of the crisis.

The president has at times felt frustrated with Dr. Fauci’s candor, aides say, as he has called for strict social-distancing measures to combat the virus. The two have also differed on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug the president has repeatedly promoted as a possible treatment for the virus. Dr. Fauci has noted there are cases that show the drug may have an effect but others that show no impact. “I think in terms of science, I don’t think we could definitively say it works,” he said April 5 on CBS.

During a briefing last week, Mr. Trump moved to cut off the doctor from answering a reporter’s question about medical evidence behind the drug.

But Dr. Fauci has also drawn praise from the president, who listened to his advice in agreeing to extend social-distancing guidelines through the end of April. In a March interview on Fox News, Mr. Trump said, “Tony’s extraordinary” and that “we get along very well.”

During his Sunday CNN appearance, Dr. Fauci said that medical experts faced political constraints in trying to push early for a swift response to the virus. “What goes into those decisions is complicated,” he said. “But you’re right, I mean, obviously, if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different. But there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.”

Despite his critics, Dr. Fauci—through White House briefings and regular television interviews—has become a popular figure in the country. A Quinnipiac poll last week put his approval rating at 78% for handling of the crisis, versus the 46% approval rating for the president.

EU competition chief warns pandemic has made companies more vulnerable to foreign bids

European countries should buy stakes in companies to stave off the threat of Chinese takeovers, the EU competition chief has said, as Brussels steps up plans to protect businesses fighting for survival during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Regulators are already working on proposals to grant EU countries sweeping powers to derail unfair competition from state-backed enterprises.

Margrethe Vestager, also executive vice-president of the European Commission, told the Financial Times: “We don’t have any issues of states acting as market participants if need be — if they provide shares in a company, if they want to prevent a takeover of this kind.”

European companies have long been in the sights of Chinese rivals, but the sharp economic downturn caused by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent steep falls in share prices across the continent have increased the potential for overseas bids.

“It’s very important that one is aware that there is a real risk that businesses that are vulnerable can be the object of a takeover,” Ms Vestager said. “The situation now really underlines the need so we work really intensively. This is one of our main priorities.”

She cautioned against rushing out measures, saying the best solution would be to draw up regulations that acted as a deterrent.

“People are more than welcome to come do business in Europe but not to do that with unfair competitive means. It has to have this double function.”

European countries should buy stakes in companies to stave off the threat of Chinese takeovers, the EU competition chief has said, as Brussels steps up plans to protect businesses fighting for survival during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Regulators are already working on proposals to grant EU countries sweeping powers to derail unfair competition from state-backed enterprises.

Margrethe Vestager, also executive vice-president of the European Commission, told the Financial Times: “We don’t have any issues of states acting as market participants if need be — if they provide shares in a company, if they want to prevent a takeover of this kind.”

European companies have long been in the sights of Chinese rivals, but the sharp economic downturn caused by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent steep falls in share prices across the continent have increased the potential for overseas bids.

“It’s very important that one is aware that there is a real risk that businesses that are vulnerable can be the object of a takeover,” Ms Vestager said. “The situation now really underlines the need so we work really intensively. This is one of our main priorities.”

She cautioned against rushing out measures, saying the best solution would be to draw up regulations that acted as a deterrent.

“People are more than welcome to come do business in Europe but not to do that with unfair competitive means. It has to have this double function.”

LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC, Russia and other oil producing nations agreed on Sunday to cut output by a record amount, representing around 10% of global supply, to support oil prices amid the coronavirus pandemic, sources said.

The group, known as OPEC+, agreed to reduce output by 9.7 million barrels per day for May-June after a compromise with Mexico, two OPEC+ sources said.

The company’s troubles hint of what is to come — a long period of falling property prices in global cities

When it comes to cautionary global business tales, all roads seem to lead to WeWork. I have been thinking about the short-term office space company, and not only because of the lawsuit some of its board members issued last week against investor SoftBank over its decision to pull out of a share buyout.

What is striking is the broader lessons WeWork’s travails provide — especially for a post-Covid-19 world. Among them: debt matters; corporate valuations were unsustainable even before the crisis; nobody is going to be rushing to lease office space anytime soon; and real estate in many parts of both the residential and commercial sectors has far, far further to fall.

The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a corporate debt crisis that has been long coming. WeWork epitomises the excess that led to this crash. Its troubles also offer a hint of what is still to come — namely a long period of falling property prices in prime global cities in North America and parts of Europe, as the second big global real estate bubble of this millennium deflates.

Much has been written about how Covid-19 will reshape travel, tourism and retail. Less has been said about what it will mean for real estate. But this sector plays a far greater role in the global economy than the former two.

The value of global real estate is more than all the world’s stocks and bonds combined. It’s also a key growth driver. Construction in all areas of real estate in the US, for example, accounted for 18.1 per cent of gross domestic product in 2019. Unfortunately, what we are seeing in many parts of the global real estate market right now is an explosive combination of oversupply, under-demand, and the very worst aspects of financialisation.

Let’s start with supply, focusing in particular on the US, where prime markets were overbuilt and starting to trend downwards even before the pandemic struck. Low interest rates fuelled a bubble in commercial real estate in particular. Since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, prices had more than doubled, and the US Federal Reserve was warning about froth.

In the US, the bubble was most pronounced in digital centres, where an increasing amount of wealth and job growth has been concentrated. This is exactly the market fed by WeWork, which the president of the Boston Federal Reserve, Eric Rosengren, flagged last year for its role in exacerbating the property bubble. The WeWork business model, which relied on a lot of short-term financing but also long-term lending commitments, was an eerie throwback to problems within the banking sector during the subprime crisis.

The demand side of real estate was becoming problematic too, even before Covid-19 hit. The US-China trade war had driven away many overseas participants in both the commercial and high-end residential markets.

This came as landlords, not only in the US but many other countries too, were already struggling thanks to the rise of ecommerce, which has hurt retail tenants. That shift to the virtual world will now be put on steroids by national lockdowns in response to Covid-19.

For landlords, rent growth is correlated to job growth. We will not be seeing either for some time. Meanwhile, home buying among younger Americans, already constrained by debt and underemployment before the crisis, will be even more so. Even when the recovery begins, companies that can will replace as many laid off workers as possible with software. Some will realise that work at home arrangements during the pandemic were more productive and climate friendly. This will be more reason not to lease space in expensive cities — although it might support residential buying among the small group of high-end workers who have job security.

The result of Covid-19 will be to exacerbate both the wealth divide and the politics that surround it. That may reshape the regulatory landscape in real estate. The people most affected by the virus are poor, and in terms of economic impact, young. Bernie Sanders may be officially out of the Democratic presidential primary race. But his supporters will still be inclined to elect local and state governments that will raise taxes on large, and rich property owners and reshape zoning laws to create more affordable housing. That may be good for society but it will also put pressure on profit margins and valuations, at least in the short term.

The deflation we are likely to see for the next few years as the result of this downturn will be yet another challenge for real estate, across the board. Deflation and low interest rates will allow some buyers to scoop up property on the cheap. But deflation means lower prices, lower incomes and less buying power. That may well translate into higher borrowing costs for many companies as markets realise the depth of the trouble they are in. Consider how the pandemic has already pushed “blue-chip” companies, such as Ford and Kraft Heinz, into junk bond territory.

A multitude of debt-ridden zombie firms will go bust, leaving still fewer tenants to fill the empty office buildings. Highly leveraged hotel developers and individual mortgage borrowers will beg for government aid. Financial assets underwritten by mortgage debt will start to go bad, exacerbating the default cycle. Credit will be hard to come by. Cash will be king. It’s the WeWork lesson, writ large.

How the next euro crisis could unfold

What if Italy cannot service its debt and a future government is tempted to default?

This is not a forecast. But I think it is a plausible scenario. After initial relief at the emergency deal struck last week by EU finance ministers, investors will study the small print and conclude the rescue package will have no macroeconomic impact.

The main elements of the deal were a credit line from the European Stability Mechanism, credit support from the European Investment Bank, and reinsurance for national unemployment schemes.

The dispute about whether a loan from the ESM bailout fund should come with strings attached will be forgotten. Italy does not want one anyway. Giuseppe Conte, prime minister, has concluded that his government would not survive the humiliation. In any case, the European Central Bank has done enough to forestall a sovereign liquidity crisis this year. The ECB’s pandemic emergency purchase programme trumps all else.

The only programme under discussion that could have made an economic impact is the post-crisis recovery fund. After EU leaders kicked the ball across to the finance ministers, they have kicked it back. The European Council’s agreed text mentions a recovery fund, together with a reference to innovative financial instruments. (This means different things to different people.) But nothing was agreed. The momentum for “coronabonds” as an instrument to raise finance for the fund may be fading.

My expectation now is that the European Council will, instead, end up agreeing on a small recovery fund from within the EU’s 2021-2027 budget, with the usual exaggerated claims of how much this amount can be leveraged. The main function of a recovery fund will be to serve as an attention-seeking device for idle European institutions making no macroeconomic impact whatsoever in a €12tn economy.

So we are left with national fiscal policies and ECB support. My baseline assumption is that the economic impact of the crisis will be larger than estimated by some forecasters. The German economic institutes have produced their joint forecast of an improbably precise 4.2 per cent decline in national gross domestic product this year, followed by a 5.8 per cent increase in 2021 — the perfect V-shaped recovery. If they are right, and if it translates to the eurozone as a whole, then we are done. There will be no crisis and no need for extraordinary measures beyond those that have already been taken.

But I believe they are wrong. These forecasts are not factoring in the global network effects of the lockdowns, the lasting impact on sectors, such as transport and tourism, and a possible second wave of infections in the winter. My scenario assumes a fall in eurozone GDP closer to 10 per cent this year, with Germany performing a little better than the average and Italy and Spain worse. My scenario also assumes that the German economy will recover moderately in 2021, while the south will recover less.

The combination of rising debt and falling GDP will raise Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio from the current 135 per cent to between 160 and 180 per cent.

The majority of members in the ECB’s governing council will always support the eurozone economy in a moment of crisis. But I would not bet on the ECB bankrolling highly-indebted countries indefinitely. The ECB’s emergency programmes will end. People may start remembering Christine Lagarde’s slip of the tongue last month. The president of the ECB may actually have meant it when she said the bank’s job is not to close spreads. There are quite a few people in the ECB governing council who believe exactly that.

At some point, rating agencies or investors could start to question Italy’s solvency. The issue is not only the total amount of outstanding debt, but also the country’s low economic growth rate. This is the third recession in Italy since 2008. Each time the economy has emerged weaker. So, what if the rating agencies conclude that Italy cannot service its outstanding debt, and attach sequential credit downgrades?

Imagine if this happens in 2021 or 2022, just before Italy’s next general election. Mr Conte and his government are popular right now. Will that continue to be so once the full depth of the recession becomes apparent? Matteo Salvini, a more marginalised political figure in Italian politics since last year, may bounce back. If he were to win an election in 2022 or 2023, his government might be tempted to default on Italy’s debt. And then what?

Like any scenario, this one, too, depends on uncertain events unfolding in a particular sequence. I hate to attach numerical probabilities to any future outcomes. But I think this scenario is not any less likely than the optimistic one of a V-shaped economic recovery, on which actual policy is based.

So I am left wondering: why does the EU not wish to hedge against it?

Doctors surprised by number of coronavirus victims who suffer complications, deaths related to cardiovascular system

People with cardiovascular disease face more life-threatening complications and a substantially higher risk of death from the new coronavirus, according to data and reports from doctors in several countries, and even those with simple high blood pressure are being urged to take extra care against infection.

Among the complications are conditions that put these patients’ already strained hearts under additional stress. While Covid-19 is a respiratory disease, doctors increasingly report that some patients develop cardiovascular complications such as heart-rhythm disorders, blood clots and inflammation causing chest pain that mimics a heart attack.

These complications can be deadly. “We’ve certainly seen cardiac arrests,” said Matthew Tomey, director of the cardiac intensive-care unit at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital in New York City.

“It’s very clear that there is a cardiovascular involvement in Covid-19 disease,” said Nir Uriel, director of advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

These complications also strike Covid-19 patients who were otherwise healthy, but people with heart disease have more trouble because their cardiovascular systems are already impaired, Dr. Uriel said. “It’s a double-edged sword,” he said.

Cardiovascular disease is the most common and deadliest so far of several underlying conditions that make some people more vulnerable to the ravages of Covid-19, a disease that causes barely an ache or pain for some who are infected but sends others to ICUs for weeks. People with diabetes, chronic lung disease and cancer are also at risk, according to several studies.

Cardiologists say they aren’t surprised that Covid-19 takes a heavier toll on heart-disease patients. So have SARS and MERS, two other coronaviruses, as well as severe influenza.

Still, they are taken aback by the huge numbers of such cases. “I have never seen such a volume of patients come in all at once and all be so critically ill,” said Sahil Parikh, an interventional cardiologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.

Scientists say they don’t fully understand why cardiovascular disease puts people at such increased risk. The American Heart Association is funding research to learn more.

Many of these patients are older, more prone to hypertension, and already more vulnerable because immune systems naturally weaken with advanced age. But high blood pressure, coronary-artery disease and other heart conditions put many younger people at increased risk, too.

About 46% of American adults have high blood pressure, according to guidelines by the American College of Cardiology and the AHA. African-Americans, who have the highest mortality from cardiovascular disease of all racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., are being infected and dying from the new virus at disproportionately high rates.

“We have so many people in the United States and across the world with cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Uriel said. “It’s immediately a risk factor for more severe coronavirus disease.”

Because so little is known, even people who have their high blood pressure under control and don’t have any other risk factors are advised to take extra precautions against Covid-19 infection.

“My gut feeling is hypertension as a single entity—not associated with any other cardiovascular disease or diabetes or obesity or smoking or vaping—probably is not much of an increased risk factor, but we don’t know that,” said Mariell Jessup, the AHA’s chief science and medical officer. “We just have to urge great caution for everyone.”

Cardiologists also worry that patients who are stuck at home or recently unemployed are missing out on medications and care. They are particularly concerned that patients may stop taking blood-pressure medications following reports that certain types—angiotensin-converting enzyme or ACE-inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers—could increase the risk of Covid-19 infection. Several medical societies have said patients should remain on the drugs because evidence of increased infection risk is weak.

In fact, the drugs may provide a benefit against Covid-19, by blocking an enzyme that promotes inflammation in the lung, said Gian Paolo Rossi, chair of internal medicine at Italy’s University of Padua. “The drugs are protective,” he said. “Stopping them is certainly not good for patients.”

Alarming death rates have been reported from all over the world. The mortality rate of Covid-19 patients who have cardiovascular disease is more than four times higher than the rate for patients overall with the illness, according to data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It is nearly three times higher for Covid-19 patients with high blood pressure alone, the Chinese agency found.

Nearly two-thirds of Covid-19 patients who died in intensive care in Lombardy, Italy, had hypertension, according to a study of 1,591 cases in JAMA Cardiology. Nearly half of U.S. hospitalized Covid-19 patients in a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had hypertension, and 27.8% had cardiovascular disease.

Of particular concern are the cardiovascular complications caused by Covid-19. The heart has to pump more blood than usual to supply the body with adequate oxygen because it doesn’t get enough from its damaged lungs, cardiologists said. In addition, when the body kicks into high gear to fight off the virus, the inflammatory response it mounts can lead to inflammation of the heart muscle, formation of blood clots throughout the body, and heart-rhythm disorders, they said.

Nearly 20% of a group of 416 hospitalized patients in Wuhan, China, where the virus started spreading in humans, developed cardiac injuries as a result of their illness from the virus, according to another study in JAMA Cardiology. Of them, 51.2% died, compared with 4.5% who died but didn’t suffer cardiac injuries, according to the study.

Doctors have reported a surprisingly high number of Covid-19 cases in which patients developed symptoms of a heart attack. Instead, they were found to have myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can cause a weakening of its function and increase its susceptibility to rhythm disorders, said Dr. Parikh, the Columbia cardiologist.

“Patients will come to the hospital presenting for all the world like a heart attack,” said Dr. Parikh. Normally, such patients are whisked to a cardiac-catheterization lab to identify and treat blockages. Now, cardiologists take patients who could have Covid-19 to the emergency department first for an assessment, he said.