Coming too late to affect the meteoric rise in US stocks on Wednesday, China's official propaganda wing may be coming to its senses, albeit quite late in the game.
Late Wednesday, instead of the usual 2500-3000 new reported cases and 90-100 fresh deaths from the newly-named COVID-19, China's Ministry of Truth instead announced 14,840 new cases and 242 deaths.
The new totals are being reported with some differences, but John Hopkins' usually-reliable counts have mainland China at 59,822, with worldwide reported cases at 60,349. There are 527 confirmed cases outside of China and a total of 1,370 deaths, all but two occurring in China.
These are alarming numbers, only now shedding some light on just how widespread the viral infection has gone on mainland China, and just how deeply Chinese officials have been trying to cover up the carnage. It's one thing to fudge economic numbers, which China does regularly and gratuitously, but quite another when human lives are at stake.
Revelation of the virus spreading faster, affecting more people by orders of magnitude and killing more than double the numbers previously reported raised eyebrows around the world, sending markets into reverse, though not to any alarming degree. Asian and European markets staged orderly retreats of less than one percent.
Hoping to avoid complete panic, international indices are being buoyed by central banks, no doubt furiously buying behind the scenes as the severity of the condition in China becomes more apparent. Supply chains already have broken down and this is only the beginning. With China looking to be out of commission for the better part of this and next month - possibly longer - the disruption to global trade and manufacturing cannot and should not be understated.
Being the global hub for manufacturing, China, by being late in its attempts to contain the spread of COVID-19 and then attempting to downplay the severity of the crisis it faces has put its own economy and that of the globalized world in jeopardy.
This story continues to evolve and the implications just became much more serious than the Chinese government, the WHO and health officials in other countries are admitting.
Money Daily will attempt to stay atop current developments on a daily, if not more frequent, basis.
At the Close, Wednesday, February 12, 2020:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 29,551.42, +275.12 (+0.94%)
NASDAQ: 9,725.96, +87.02 (+0.90%)
S&P 500: 3,379.45, +21.70 (+0.65%)
NYSE: 14,136.98, +82.88 (+0.59%)
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