Leeham News and Analysis
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Leeham News and Analysis
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- Boeing unlikely to meet FAA’s 90-day deadline for new safety program April 18, 2024
- Focus on quality not slowing innovation, says GKN April 18, 2024
- Boeing defends 787, 777 against whistleblower charges April 17, 2024
- Dissecting Boeing CEO’s statement next new airplane will cost $50bn April 15, 2024
Pontifications: What shape and how long will recovery take?
By Scott Hamilton
April 20, 2020, © Leeham News: There just is little good news for the aerospace industry right now.
Airbus announced it will reduce production by a third across the A-Series airliners. I don’t think this will be the last cut.
Boeing last week said it will resume production in the Seattle area of its wide-body airplanes. It’s also now preparing to restart production of the 737 MAX, clearly a piece of good news. Defense-related production for the P-8 Poseidon and the KC-46A tanker resumed last week.
But Boeing hasn’t laid out its production plans for the 7-Series airplanes. This undoubtedly will come next week. Monday is the shareholders’ annual meeting. This will be held virtually at 9am CDT. Access is via the Boeing website. The first quarterly earnings call will be held two days later, also accessible via the web. Either meeting may outline the production plans for the rest of the year.
MAX remains grounded
The 737 MAX, of course, is still grounded. Boeing hoped for mid-year recertification. Recertification then is almost certainly off the table due to the virus and some additional software and wiring fixes now required. Production ramp-up is expected to be low and slow. It’s highly unlikely that production will return to the pre-grounding rate of 52/mo for several years.
Production for the 787 and 777 is expected to be reduced below previously announced levels.
Suppliers to Boeing resumed production before now. Products are going into inventory. Boeing sees a need to keep the suppliers “warm,” with payments made to prevent collapse.
Lengthy recovery
It will be years before the airline and aerospace industries recover.
Satyendra Pandey, the former head of strategy and planning for India’s GoAir and now a commentator, provided LNA with his analysis of the impact of COVID-19.
In a recap, Satyendra noted:
- 1991’s Gulf War resulted in a 7%-9% reduction in passenger demand;
- 2001’s 9/11 terror attacks on the US caused a US recession, a 12% reduction in some markets and airline bankruptcies;
- 2003’s SARS virus, which originated in China, caused a 20% decline in demand in Hong Kong;
- 2004’s earthquake in the Indian Ocean and resulting tsunami caused reductions of up to 35% in the region; and
- 2010’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption in Iceland caused a reduction of 20%-30% in Europe.
Coronavirus “decimated” demand worldwide.
V, W, U or L recovery?
How long and what shape the recovery will be are two questions for which there are no easy answers.
Will the recovery be a sharp “V”? Will there be a recovery, followed by a second wave of CV-19 infections and deaths (as many suspect), followed by another sharp recovery, a “W”?
Will it be a prolonged dip, followed by a sustainable recover, a “U”?
Or will it be a long, slow recover in the shape of an “L”?
Satyendra looks at previous events and illustrates the recovery shapes and periods here:
Many airlines already indicated they will emerge from this crisis as smaller carriers.
At LNA, we believe recovery will be 4-8 years best case-worst case. Either way, the airline and aerospace industries are in for a long, painful period.
If IATA/ICAO/WHO decides to certify specific Corona quick tests as part of security/check in traffic can recover quickly as there is a big pent-up demand.
New security routines were implemented after 9/11 and this might be another round of enhanced safety routines.
One can hope there will be spacing requirements in Aircraft economy class cabines reducing the stacking of pax in superslim seats with future IR temp test on all pax on international flights.
Similar tests for offices and workshops of letting the immune and healty work full time getting the economy rolling. There are Covid-19 Quick-tests developend in many countries including China but no international certification yet for these test, each of these countries want to approve and sell their own test globally. Once they finally have agreement there will be massive production of testkits and an agreement on documentation on results and frequency of test.
There are a few problems with this:
We don’t yet have a reliable antibody test, hopefully that will change.
We don’t know how long immunity lasts, so we cannot yet say that if you’ve had COVID-19 you are not going to be able to spread it for X number of weeks/months/years.
What we seem to know at the moment, is that you can be infected, and be able to infect others a) a few days before you have observable symptoms b) while you show no symptoms at all.
There are some risk factors for COVID-19, but it’s not just the elderly that are at risk. The virus seems to affect people in different ways. You may be fairly young, fit, and healthy with no apparent underlying health conditions, and just be unlucky, and not survive the virus. In a few months we should have a better idea as more data is gathered, and analysed.
We don’t know how long immunity lasts, and indeed there’s reports from South Korea that people who have had it once can get it again. They’ve had 146 (or thereabouts) repeat cases is what I read – likely too many for this to be a mistake.
What South Korea has shown pretty well is that mass testing capacity, vigorously used often and everywhere in conjuction with other controls can successfully limit the damage and inconvenience. I expect that, when it’s reestablished, long haul travel is going to be accompanied with a thorough throat swabbing on arrival for a some time to come.
A vaccination card is (was?) required part of travel (to certain areas with varying requirements depending on the disease issues)
Ego, while I think they will get there sooner (SARs/MERs/Ebola created the developmental template that is proven safe) then its a matter of proving vaccination.
Worst case it requires repeat vaccination. Once you reach XX% level, then its a non issue.
Covd-19 is a much harder to catch (despite it may not seeming so) and the herd level % is therefore lower.
The quick test is not for anti-bodies but for the virus. They tell you “are you a hazard to those around your now.
The newer ones coming to BC are done via a hand-held device and can be as quick as 15 minutes. This is down from days just a few months ago. Quick virus testing is coming and is really the only hope shortish term to re-open things.
It’s not travelling by plane that is most problematic. It’s is being in another place than your home, and the situation at your destination.
Would you like to go on holiday in Belgium? Belgium currently holds the world record in number of dead people, due to the coronavirus, per million inhabitants. How about a trip to Spain, where you aren’t allowed to leave you home for other purposes than going to the pharmacy or to buy food? How about a shopping trip to New York next weekend?
With a reliable and certified test you could let the immune people out. Covid-19 is a pretty regular Corona type of virus.
It could have been much worse with a Covid-19 spread and a Ebola type of mortality rate. So governments around the world must prepare, in any high density animal population deadly diseases will pop up and with no health check boarding +17hrs flights it will quickly spread around the World.
We can see that test kits finallly get better and are being used in the 100 000’s and some quick tests like developed at Stanford U are getting close or the same quality as the present lab tests and are in for FDA approval.
You have now accounted for the future travel pattern of the 10-20 % of customers who are dominantly rational and Baysian in their calculations. It does not help much. Now calculate the probable travel pattern of the many who said they would never fly a MAX again unless it was guaranteed 100 % safe, the other 80-90 % of former travelers.
People don’t care and the MAX is safe sans its known and to be fixed issues.
Meg:
I don’t see the difference in you get sick on an airplane and then wrong locale.
Don’t fly if you can’t afford it.
Getting infected on the plane or at your destination is the issue.
75-95% of travellers don’t know what aircraft type their trip is booked on, they know the time for self check-in and price of their ticket, hardly the extra fees for check-in luggage they will be charged. Most on-line booking sites will probably just say 737/A320 types and refer to the airline, they will probably charge $12 extra for telling you what type of aircraft is scheduled for the flight.
For $750 they might sell you a computer dump e-mail of AD’s, due date, terminating action SB with Rev # and performed date/station of incorporation on the ACREG for us nerds. (maybe not SWA…)
Spacing requirements in economy class cabins?!? What are you smoking?
It can be the terrible truth of banning 17″ spacing and 10 in a row inside the 777-300. Maybe RR/Airbus and Emirates make a deal to reengine 100ea A380s with new RR Ultrafans as a go away present to Tim Clark as spacing requirements in economy takes hold…
Short term issue no one is going to re-do an interior let alone an A380 interior for that (big bucks)
Emirates is doing on site anti body testing and temps. That is the sort of adjustment we will see until vaccine in affect.
Perhaps it’s time for government, FAA, EASA, et al to mandate seating in the cattle class. Bailing out BIG AVIATION as they render most of us flying on our own dime are stuffed into inhumane seating conditions.
How would this help? Your perceived half inch of comfort would not stop the virus. Planes would have to be 33% empty and ticket prices would soar, meaning fewer would travel.
Spot on.
Business class + spacing for all at econo pricing?
I have no issue with setting standards but you also have to understand it will cost more.
At 18 inches my shoulders don’t touch the shoulders of a largish man in the adjacent seat. At 17.1 inches I intrude into the space even modest sized women and our shoulders annoyingly touch. A little can be a lot. It avoids shifting, grabbing seat handles and all sorts of touch interactions caused by the inconvenience. I found myself avoiding all older Boeing aircraft.
Aside from a few Asian nations such as South Korean, Taiwan and Singapore with previous experience with the SARS pandemic few nations have been prepared with measures that don’t destroy the economy.
The good news is that we are learning now how to prevent this from ever happening in the future.
The poor response wasn’t helped by the likelihood that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was introduced inadvertently by clumsy field work from Virus Researchers based in Wuhan (they had gone kilometres into Bat Caves and come out covered in bat faeces and urine) because whatever the cause the “face saving” response of the CCP authorities was to hide the evolving COVID-19 pandemic by literally prosecuting medical workers that were warning of the pandemic they were experiencing for spreading false rumours. This clearly robbed the world of at least 2 weeks. More time was lost from downplaying of the virus contagiousness and the clumsy ideologically tainted response of the WHO and some western politicians who didn’t fact check this body or were aligned with its open borders concerns.
In my own country of Australia modelling shows that the lockdown restrictions has reduced the transmission factor from 2.5 to 0.5 which I assume is over its 2 weeks course. Seems still to high to me but likely many inter family transmission.
However research from Heinsberg Germany, the most infected city in that country, tells us that hygiene measures, without lock downs will be adequate to prevent the spread of the virus.
In that town a test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus itself (RT-PCR and isothermal nucleic acid amplification) was widely carried out as well as test for antibodies or ELISA test was carried. This tells us how contagious it and how may asymptomatic carriers there were who had the disease.
Here we come to hygiene measures. Masks, not using touch screens without cleaning them, hand sanitisers, washing surfaces distancing, cleaning.
The population will need to be drilled, supplies in place and ways of testing passengers developed.
The airline industry needs to do something about self check in terminals. They likely helped spread the disease.
I like this theory as well, but all the scientific evidence suggests that an intermediate animal was involved and humans cannot be infected directly from bats
Yep and its really irrelevant for dealing with this now regardless.
Doing so diverts from the in front of us mission.
The scientific ‘evidence’ the media discusses is often selected work of influencers or aligned with a particular narrative. There are as many researchers saying there was no intermediate animals. The ‘intermediate animal’ theory saves face for what face the CCP has left.
The nearest horseshoe bat’s live 900km from Wuhan, the Wuhan Wet Markets did not sell Bats. We do know that the two Wuhan virology research institutes were sending researchers into the bat caves to sample virus. They even made a documentary and from this that it’s clear their PPE was wildly irresponsibly inadequate given they were dealing with airborne virus, basically a Tyvek suit, an N95 mask and work goggles. Full hazmat is required for this and biohazard disinfecting.
Please Note:
1 The Chinese government is now pre-reviewing ALL of the scientific papers their researcher are publishing. If a researchers publishes something inconvenient to the CCP the researchers career is probably over and if they push it police can visit. People who have spoken out are missing. CCP “soft power” influence extends into Western Universities, the scientific publishers through CCP liked academics working there. These are the same people that arrested or disciplined medical workers reporting of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. One party states are like that. Don’t trust a thing, fact check and fact check the fact checkers.
2 The virus was identified in the last weeks of November 2019, maybe earlier. Yet until January 21 2020, 8 weeks latter, the Chinese authorities went out of their way to inform the rest of the world that COVID-19 was not contagious via people to people transmission. The Useful idiots at the UN WHO reinforced this.
Yet prior to January 21, while they were telling us it wasn’t spread by people to people transmission they had already locked down Wuhan, no flights to other Chinese cities but were still allowing flights out and telling the world it didn’t spread person to person.
What is also galling about this is that prior to 21 January disparate Chinese corporations, at the direction of the Chinese government, were hoovering up the rest of the worlds supply of face masks, medical supplies and fibres.
The US Government was not alerted by the Chinese Government or the WHO but by the disaster that was happening in Italy and some Taiwanese researchers who had unofficial links in Wuhan. The CCP is probably narcistic enough to have let COVID-19 spread by omission to maintain their global economic position. The CCP propaganda machine is now swing saying they defeated the virus but scapegoating and allowing persecution of foreigners, especially Africans who have nothing to do with this.
Irrespective of whether this virus escaped a lab, or was spread by a lab linked field worker covered in bat droppings or whether it was spread by the selling and slaughtering of wild animals in filthy conditions in wet markets China is responsible for creating this. There is the suppression on the contagiousness of this but also the issue of wet live wild animal food trade, public snotting and spitting has never been dealt with by the authorities.
The aviation industry must treat China as a special case that presents a risk to the healthy of passengers and the industry and special visa requirements need to be implemented.
China needs to be kicked out of the WTO, the WHO, the UN Human Rights council and I would have a look at what mischief they are up to at ICAO and IATA as well.
There appears to be scientific evidence that the virus was from bats, but then jumped to Pangolins, and from Pangolins to humans. Pangolins are sold in wet markets in China.
There is a lot of focus on the origins of the virus, and a lot of scientists from a lot of open, and democratic countries are looking at this. The truth will come out so right now we need to focus on mitigating the effects of the virus, and not get into the blame game with no real evidence.
Totally agree the world has to up it’s hygiene game, that’s education, education, education. I agree public spitting, and snotting have no place in the modern world regardless of culture! In some countries TB is coming back in a multi drug resistant form, and it’s aided by public spitting.
Sorry kids, I think the touch screen games at your local fast food store are going to have to go, as is touch screen food ordering. Voice activated menu systems, or gesture based screens will have to become the norm, or maybe we just go back to employing a person to stand behind the counter, and take your order.
Are you a scientist that studied virology and micro-biology? Or how come you know so much about this? Are you a natural talent or do you have a smart uncle?
As you said, we should fact check the fact checkers…
You are relying on the logical fallacy of appeal to authority. It’s not an argument and so doesn’t hold.
Shi Zhengli, dubbed the “Bat Woman”, headed the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One of her main claims to fame is that she discovered the proteins that allowed various bat corona viruses to penetrate into human cells directly without evolution in an intermediary species. She discovered this years ago and has warned of the danger several times. She was one of the researchers silenced.
Assigning the transmission as being via a Pangulan (a cute little aardvark like creature) or Snake is either just pure speculation or a way of ass covering/face saving for an accidental release. The nearest horseshoe bats colonies are 900km from Wuhan and the poor creatures were never sold in Wuhan.
The story being circulated within China now is that an intern caught the disease directly from a bat, died and passed it on etc. That story is at leas plausible but given the CCP has had evidence destroyed and people silenced we may never get to the bottom of this.
Most western countries have calculated for years that these types of virus infections will start in Chinese +10M people cities and spread quickly with the help of long range jet flights. US intelligence knew something was happening in Wuhan pretty early, but there was no careful prepared action plan to click into action in the US and Western World. I.e. close borders at X:mas and get samples of the virus to verify we did not have a working vaccine for it. Next time a new SARS type of virus pops up and start spreading these countries will act 100 times faster.
Just look at the time after the fall of Rome and the frequecies of new plagues hitting western Europe of different magnitudes.
I dont think you are drawing the correct conclusions about the Heinsberg district clusters
“seven people who walked out of the event later tested positive for the virus.”
that was the start with the very close contact situation – which is solved by social distancing.
It later grew to 1400 people from those 7.
Same in my country a wedding reception and a St Patricks day celebration at a bar ‘were the start ‘ of large clusters.
Not all those in those clusters were at the original event, they are in family groups, work places , friends and neighbours , and then their close contacts.
The community contact is as you mention fairly rare, but to make social isolation work means extended family , neighbours , work mates all have to be separated . Hygiene isnt the answer there
In Alaska community spread is high, I believe 25% of the cases are from that source.
I have not seen statistic for other locales.
Dukeofurl, I’ll try to keep this relevant for Aviation. In regards to the spread of the virus we know that in Australia its Reproductive Number was about 2.5 but that lockdown measures have reduced this to 0.5. A virus with a Reproductive Number under 1.0 will eventually disappear. We don’t know how it is spread exactly but irrespective of what mode it transmits at mostly all can be dealt with.
-If it is spread by human breath then we have two choices a/ we can lockdown b/ we impose mask wearing. Mask wearing is a way to keep the economy open without lockdown in combination with separation distances.
-If it is spread by sneezing then people need to isolate themselves or take hay fever medication and any boss shamed who wants staff with colds to keep working.
-If it is spread by touch, then people need to be aggressively propagandized to wash and sanitise 10 times per day plus before and after food preparation and food eating. Unless public touch screens are cleaned every single time after use then they must be removed from service. That includes airline self check in machines as well as banking and ticketing machines. Zero tolerance.
-It may be spread by urine and faeces, that is being investigated, it may be spread in toilets by the extensive touching of door handles, taps, toilet seats, flush buttons. Public toilets at airports will need an antiseptic surface cleaner spray for public use and signage that directs visitors to the toilet to clean every single time.
-All doors most be self opening and touch free.
-zero tolerance of public snotting or spitting even if it is a cultural practice.
In each case there is a hygiene measure that can be taken to reduce the reproduction rate to levels that will get the reproduction rate of SARS-CoV-2 to below 1.0 and allow the resumption of airline travel.
It does need to be organised, I’m already doing it. My cleaning protects not only me but other people.
Hand washing, Touch Screams eliminated or 100% sanitised after each and every use, automatic doors, mask wearing, toilet cleaning sprays provided, shamming of those that fail to comply.
All of the ‘vectors’ can be reduced to acceptable levels. It can certainly be done at airports. A regime of testing will then further reduce the rate.
Hygiene is important, I’ve posted this before, it still makes the point:
@FryRsquared presented a very interesting programme last year Contagion: The BBC Four Pandemic, this link shows the potential effect of washing your hands
https://twitter.com/FryRsquared/status/1234491912775782400
Social distancing is also needed, governments need to keep the the rate of infection/deaths below the levels that their health services can deal with.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel gets the point across very well, watch her at https://twitter.com/BenjAlvarez1/status/1250563198081740800 it’s in German, but sub-titled in English.
The only thing she is not saying bluntly, is that when the health care system is overwhelmed, people die unnecessarily as the health service is not able to treat them.
The UK London Nightingale Hospital apparently has only had 20 or so patients so far out of a possible 4000, but a small change in infection rate, and it would have been full.
Based on the numbers from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ In Europe, Germany is probably handling the outbreak the best. Figure to note is the Deaths /1M pop
Looking at those numbers Germany trails 21 others in death rate per million. The media has ignored this.
Let’s just say it out loud: Air traffic has brought the virus round the world in “no” time. Globalization and over population is the perfect soil for a pandemic like this.
Now the big question is can our science (biology, medicine,…) keep up with this challenge? Can we develop our health system in a way that such outbreaks won’t wreak havoc in the future, like it did this time, both with peoples lives as with the economy?
This is what will define if air traffic will get back up to a similar size as it has been in the near future (4-8 years).
Tests for the presence of the virus and tests for the presence of the antigen in the blood were rapidly available. The problem was that the test facilities, kits and operators could not be rolled out fast enough except in certain countries that had prepared. I do not believe vaccines will be necessary, that they may be impossible, nor do i believe that the software monopolist come vaccine monopolists vaccines are safe. I believe systems for mass testing prior to a flight can be developed that will be able to prevent a person carrying a virus from unknowingly getting on an aircraft. Even if a vaccine is possible it will always be 1 year late.
Increased hygiene will do the rest. Emirates is already using antibody based blood tests.
Hygiene really needs to be upped. Thousands of people handle airline self check in touch screens.
William:
While I share your problems with the Mega Corporations, you are mistaken in your logic when you take that and conflate it into the current Covd-19 situation.
First, several entities had approached a SAR vaccine that was successful. That was due to a different approach in designing a Vaccine. A lot of MERS research as well and both are Covid type.
You also make the mistake that this is a human adapted Flu that changes. It is not, its some kind of cross over (and spare the conspiracy please) and its not the same disease template either.
You are also mistaken in hygiene is the answer, its a help, it is not an answer.
There is massive government money in this, its not a Pharmacy driven (or lack) of profit. There is also major philanthropy money in this. Neither cares on the profits and can and will drive it through.
Ebola using the new approach has not one but two vaccines and several more close to approval. It was thought it was impossible.
Two vaccines are in human trials in the US right now, one entity is ramping up its production end so that when (if) approved it can hit the ground running. Others are doing the same and I expect all promising Vacines world wide will be doing the same.
No its not going to stop it entirely this fall, but first responders then at risk population to follow.
Hygiene, Physical Distancing, sanitizing packages, masks gloves all play a part in slowing it down now.
A Vaccine is always going to be too late to stop a pandemic and prevent what we are seeing, months after the virus has already spread. Relying on vaccines is buying the snake oil of vaccine promoters.
Vaccines are a billion dollar business and they can’t do a thing to resolve this crisis or any future because they are already too late will always be too late even if vaccine’s are ready in 3 months instead of 18.
Do realise how the world works? Public Relations firms work with news media, journalists and advertisers to print certain stories that promote what is wanted which in this case is compulsory mass vaccinations. That’s how newspapers make their money. Lobbyists do the same thing to influence government. A bunch of “non profits” then provide independent seemingly advice. Lawyers add some stick and threat.
Soon it will be like China, you can’t get a credit card without a full vaccination certificate.
Hygiene, not vaccines, eliminated 90%-95% of diseases. Vaccinations got rid of the rest. Clean water for drinking and washing, making sure people had personal instead of public toilets, making sure sewage and waste was clean or isolated before it entered the environment.
Hygiene insures that only relatively non lethal non debilitating diseases spread.
You mainly need to keep the snot of the touch screens by cleaning them every time or better still eliminate them entirely and go back to human beings.
I can’t say I represent everyone however until there is a vaccine, I don’t see my family and I traveling anytime soon…especially internationally.
That is our approach as well though most of the family is domestic oriented there are some who do international randomly.
As with so many things, the Oracles are simply guessing, they don’t know as this is a new event type.
Pandemic with an overdue cycle of drop off. I was seeing indicators of the economy was headed for a fall off anyway.
Its likely to be an uneven mix of U, V and W as well as X, Y and Z.
One economist is predicting worse than the great depression. Like others, he failed to factor in that government is responding to this even unlike the 2008 crash that was fought tooth and nail for political reasons and certainly the 1929 crash that they sat back and did nothign.
While no one can stop the predicting, it makes you looks very foolish to cherry pick the data and specific situation. History does not alwyas repeat itself. Only ignored history.
Domestic wise I expect a rebound followed by a drop off.
Cruise ships had a bad rep anyway and unless that industry reforms it may well be toast.
Each industry is going to be different.
Boeing is clearly affected very deeply with the self inflicted MAX issue and its on going cancellations.
International may see a major shift with industries being brought back on shore and particularity medical equipment supplies.
I agree…everyone is an “expert” these days. Its hard to filter out the “noise” from what’s happening. For investments, I have two different strategies. Since my kids are young, they have 30+ years of timeline so I’ve kept them at 100% invested in solid companies. Personally, I’m in cash and waiting for a drop-off in the market…again, that’s what I’m thinking but I’m not a market guru so who knows…
History doesn’t repeat but there are “patterns”. Regardless, I’m not predicting.
Spot on.
My financial guy has us in as good a position as we can be. Our losses are about half market losses.
We have time to recover more in that we don’t need the money now.
5 years and a reasonable full recovery and we are good.
The 1929 crash was caused by a incredible reduction in the money supply of nearly 35% over less than 4 years. It was a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. They did the opposite of what is now called quantitative easing and withdrew money from circulation. Milton Friedman wrote a paper on it. Widely accepted. The policy was in part to get rid of weak regional banks and leave only strong (big boy banks?), well it sure did that. Inflating the money supply (now euphemistically called “quantitative easing” will be fine if only a temporary measure so long as there are goods still being produced, otherwise we will see price inflation.
I think the economic consequences will dampen airline travel even more than the virus risks will. Those who have jobs are furloughed for periods, on reduced hours, or on unemployment. We would all love to take 3 week vacations anywhere about now (heck, I’d take a sit down meal outside my house with friends or family) but it will be awhile before the world collectively has the disposable income level it had 2 months ago to travel. Businesses likewise are in dire straits even if they’re not in imminent danger of bankruptcy so business travel will be frozen. These restrictions will be lifted only long after a vaccine is available and the virus fades from our immediate view. This I see as the greater challenge
If you mean impact vs restrictions I agree.
Also to factor in we were over due for a down turn (patterns again) so where we were going and this on top of it?
Depends on politicians becoming sensible.
(Yeah, I know, they pander, they jump in front of a subject and pretend they are leading – exaggerating what their health offices are saying, …. 😉
Several experienced epidemiologists advice against ‘lockdown’ restrictions, but urge shielding of the vulnerable. For example:
https://ratical.org/PerspectivesOnPandemic-II.html
http://www.trackingzebra.com/new-blog/2020/3/23/covid19-a-path-forward?fbclid=IwAR1XJIURbLmo3cpMdPHcqO9yVsyXcIMBxNneCa2KZg6y_2FsDMUU6OZzUYg
The cost to health of obsessive actions continues. People are permanently disabled or gone – dead – because they are afraid to go to the hospital, when they finally do it is too late to save them. (Heart problems, broken bones, illness other than COVID-19 – the perennial killer corona virus INFLUENZA is still about. Apparently people are overlooking sources of advice by telephone, B.C. has 811, plus another just for COVID-19 concerns, and 211 for general advice such as mental trougle and locating help to being food and supplies. Whoi is panicking them? Politicians!)
Deaths by suicide and opiod overdose are more frequent today.
People are stranded because gummints panicked. A minor case is Russian scientists from a multi-nation salmon research ship, who are being hosted in Nanaimo BC where they are writing their reports – they can’t go home at this time. Americans left the expedition early for fear of being blocked from getting home! (Thus research could not cover some US waters as planned.) Jerk officials in Florida are happy to benefit from cruise ships visiting their fiefdom but don’t have the decency to help when some passengers are ill. POTUS Trump is happy to benefit from trade coming his way but the jerk tried to block exports. Food production and shipment is disrupted.
Many charities have lost their normal sources of income – Salvation Army thrift stores for example can’t even accept donations now as their space is full.
You could just as easily say the world has loved running large trade surpluses with the US but now they are upset they can’t buy American? The hypocrisy cuts both ways. Nor is it limited to the US
The other issue is that there is a wide variation in the degree to which nations have been (are being) affected by the virus: And an even greater variation in the degree to which it has caused unity as opposed to division, both social and political. Germany stands in stark contrast to Italy in degree affected and the US stands in contrast to just about anywhere in terms of the public social and political division. I have a sad feeling that both sets of variations will have a severe impact on the rate at which their aviation business recovers.
My take is that international travel is going to be drastically limited for some time. We have gone from a global free for all to a national response to this virus. those countries taking strict measures are going to be very reticent to allow visitors from countries which have not. Further the response of locals to visitors is going to be very negative in many parts of the world for some time. I fear that the legacy of this will be long and painful for the industry and recovery to previous growth levels is not at all certain.
One thing to keep in mind about the transmission rate is that it depends on a large uninfected population. As that population diminishes, the rate will as well. As social distancing measures are relaxed, the curve will continue at a flattened rate and gradually decline. That will signal the end, at least for this wave., and social distancing will have served its purpose.
At that point hygiene will be remain an effective measure, as it always has been. I don’t think it means the end of touch screens but there are anti-viral coatings and there will be a lot more regular cleaning. In my school, we already had classes wiping them down for each session.
The main effort for COVID-19 will be to understand how it attacks the body. The receptor cells for which it’s optimized are present in blood, nerves, and most of the major organs, so a great deal depends on the immune response. In most people the initial response is adequate and the immune system wins. In the immuno-compromised, the response is not adequate and the virus can infect almost any organ.
In some people, the initial response seems ok but then there is a storm response that attacks the organs as well as the virus. That accounts for most deaths in populations that are not at-risk, and it can’t be predicted. The onset can be quick and doesn’t yet have a definitive known trigger.
Doctors are learning a lot about this now and are beginning to classify patients earlier and anticipate the immune response (too little or too great). The immune system can be aided or impeded but getting it wrong is catastrophic, so caution is needed.
Out of that should come better treatment and fewer fatalities. For now there is a learning curve and unfortunately that means more deaths. But better understanding and treatments will probably come before a vaccine is ready.