Coronavirus Morning News Brief – April 13: Will Inflation Turn on a Dime, Apple Employees Return to Campus

A cashier at a Stop & Shop in New York City

Good morning. This is Jonathan Spira reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on the 764th day of the pandemic.

As expected, the inflation rate for March came out with a record-shattering number, 8.5%.  But just as Covid case numbers can and do turn on a dime – an expression that alludes to the fact that the dime is the smallest-size U.S. coin – so can the inflation rate.

Oil prices, a cause of much of the inflation, have come down from the Ukraine war-induced high and have settled in at prices not much higher than at the start of the invasion. Indeed, the wholesale price of petrol has dropped by over 50 cents from their high last month and the retail price of a gallon of gasoline is slowly but surely falling, according to figures from the U.S. Information Energy Administration, after hitting a high of $4.31 in the middle of March, has dropped to $4.09 as of Tuesday.

The pandemic caused what the Austrians and Germans call Hamsterkäufe, or hamster buying –so named as it is akin to the manner in which the rodents stuff their cheeks with food.

In late 2020, a headline in the Austrian newspaper Heute read, “Hamster Buying!  Viennese Storm Supermarkets,” and similar headlines were in evidence in regional German papers as well.

Consumers, that would be we shoppers, perceived or saw a shortage of items such as toilet paper (something so infamous that the Austrian Post Office issued a commemorative stamp that was printed on a piece of toilet paper), and manufacturers reacted swiftly, perhaps too much so.  Not too soon thereafter there was a shortage of shipping containers and port capacity, thanks to the excess purchasing as well as a high absence rate due to Covid, left ships anchored off shore waiting for days if not weeks in some cases before their wares could be offloaded.

So there we have a supply chain crisis, started by shoppers’ hamster-like habits, exacerbated by excessive Covid-caused absences, and then further aggravated by Russia’s insane invasion of Ukraine.

A recent headline by Freight Waves, a company that focuses on supply chain analysis,  asks the question, “Will the bullwhip do the Fed’s job on inflation?” The author, Craig Fuller, notes that “[T]he only thing surprising about the freight market slowdown is the speed at which it’s unfolding,” adding that demand for trucks has slowed, while typically in the spring demand would rise sharply.

Retailers noted the practice of hamster buying and stocked up, in many cases by far too much.  Even empty car dealerships are seeing more deliveries.   President Biden is allowing higher ethanol E15 gas to be sold during the summer months, despite pollution risks, and countries are compensating quite well for a lack of trade with Russia.

Now, the only thing we still have to worry about is that pesky uptick in Covid cases and the fact that we may not really know how bad it is given the likelihood of undercounts as testing facilities are shut down.

But that’s a story for another day.

In other news we cover today, Apple’s ability to obtain key products from suppliers is being hamstrung by lockdowns, New Zealand reopened its borders to Australians, and the German city-state of Bremen hit a full vaccination rate of 90%.

Here’s a look at what has taken place over the past 24 hours.

UNITED STATES

At Apple, corporate employees in the United States began to return to their offices on Tuesday. The move ended a two-year telecommuting policy that Apple implemented in the early day of the pandemic. Employees at locations including Apple Park and Infinite Loop had a deadline of April 11 for returning to in-person work.

GLOBAL

Die Freie Hansestadt Bremen, or the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, is a city-state in Germany that is the smallest of the country’s 16 states, or Länder.  Remarkably, it has achieved something that has eluded the other 15 states in a country where only 75% of the population is fully vaccinated.  Bremen’s population is 90% fully vaccinated and credits its approach to connect to local communities for its success.

Key Apple suppliers of iPhones and MacBooks have been forced to suspend production amidst new restrictions and lockdowns in China, according to a report by Nikkei Asia.  Pegatron, a supplier of up to 30% of all iPhones worldwide, has temporarily ended production in Shanghai and Kunshan, according to a stock-market filing, and Quanta, which makes MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops in Shanghai, has seen its assembly lines in Shanghai shut down since the start of April.

The Chinese automaker Nio, which manufactures electric vehicles, said it has suspended production after the measures in China to contain the surge of new Covid cases interrupted operations at its suppliers.

In Oceania, New Zealand began to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from Australia on Wednesday. At least 4,000 visitors arrived at airports across the country, many reportedly coming to visit family who live in New Zealand.

Since the bubble across the Tasman Sea was closed in July, there had been virtually no flights between the two countries.

In addition, New Zealand also dropped simultaneously its mask mandate for most indoor settings.

TODAY’S STATISTICS

Now here are the daily statistics for Wednesday, April 13.

As of Wednesday morning, the world has recorded 501.4 million Covid-19 cases, an increase of 1.1 million new cases in the preceding 24 hour period, and over 6.2 million deaths, according to Worldometer, a service that tracks such information. In addition, 451.5 million people worldwide have recovered from the virus, an increase of 1.4 million.

Worldwide, the number of active coronavirus cases as of Wednesday is 43,681,492, a decrease of 120,000 from the prior day. Out of that figure, 99.9%, or 43,638,172  are considered mild, and 0.1%, or 43,320 are listed as critical.  The percentage of cases considered critical is largely unchanged over the past 24 hours.

The United States reported 29,034 new coronavirus infections on Wednesday for the previous day, compared to 49,391 on Tuesday, 8,145 on Monday, 13,521 on Sunday, and 44,128 on Saturday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Figures for the weekend (reported the following day) are typically 30% to 60% of those posted on weekdays due to a lower number of tests being conducted.

The average daily number of new coronavirus cases in the United States over the past 14 days is 31,567, an 8% increase, based on data from the Department of Health and Human Services, among other sources.  The average daily death toll over the same period is 533, a decrease of 26% over the same period.

In addition, since the start of the pandemic the United States has, as of Wednesday, recorded over 82.1 million cases, a higher figure than any other country, and a death toll of over 1 million. India has the world’s second highest number of officially recorded cases, just over 43 million, and a reported death toll of 521,726. Meanwhile, Brazil has recorded the second highest number of deaths as a result of the virus, 661,552, and has 30.2 million cases.  France continues to occupy the number four position with 27.2 million cases, and Germany is in the number five slot with 23.1 million.  The United Kingdom, with 21.7 million cases, is now number six and is the only other country in the world with a total number of cases over the 20 million mark.

VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that, as of Wednesday, over 256.4 million people in the United States – or 77.2% – have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine. Of that population, 65.8%, or 218.5 million people, have received two doses of vaccine, and the total number of doses that have been dispensed in the United States is now 566.5 million. Breaking this down further, 88.6% of the population over the age of 18 – or 228.9 million people – has received at least a first inoculation and 75.7% of the same group – or 195.6  million people – is fully vaccinated.  In addition, 48.7% of that population, or 95.3 million people, has already received a third, or booster, dose of vaccine.

Over 64.8 % of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine by Wednesday, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 11.42 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 12.44 million doses are now administered each day.

Meanwhile, only 14.8% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine. In countries such as Ethiopia, Haiti, Syria, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda, for example, vaccination rates remain in the single digits, if not lower.

Anna Breuer contributed to this story.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)