Interestingly surveys suggest Chinese consumers are cautious despite lifting of the lockdown.
“A Morgan Stanley online survey of 2019 consumers in 19 provinces last week found that while most respondents—86%—were leaving the house for work, most were still reluctant to go out to shop, eat or socialize. And 69% said they would go out for essentials only, down from 75% in early March—still extremely high.” (Source: WSJ).
The chart below is also interesting showing how activity across a set of indicators has fared so far in China post the lunar new year as the country opens up.
In short – activity will take some time to recover.
“In this cohort of patients hospitalized for severe Covid-19 who were treated with compassionate-use remdesivir, clinical improvement was observed in 36 of 53 patients (68%).”
Crucial to understand the limitations of this data – the need for a randomised placebo controlled trial.
Gilead’s (GILD) CEO Daniel O’Day in an open letter expresses this.
These trials are ongoing with results coming in end of April/May.
“While it may feel like a long wait for data given the urgency of the situation, it has been only two months since the first clinical trials began. Given that it can take a year or more to have the first clinical data for an investigational treatment, it is remarkable that we expect to have the first remdesivir trial data so soon.”
The latest buzz from Chicago is also just a snapshot and drawing conclusions is “scientifically unsound“.
We have seen a 775 percent increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders.
We have seen a 775 percent increase in Teams’ calling and meeting monthly users in a one month period in Italy, where social distancing or shelter in place orders have been enforced.
That is a big difference.
They also put out press saying video calling on Teams was +1000% in March – yet without an absolute figure or comparison this isn’t that meaningful.
There is no doubt Teams is growing – now up to 44m daily average users (DAU) from 20m in November 2019.
Interesting article about advertisers blacklisting covid19 keywords.
This means that despite news outlets seeing a surge in visitors (The Guardian for example has seen +47% search traffic according to Google Trends), the industry can’t reap the advertising rewards.
“March was really different each week. From the beginning of March to the end of March, the amount of money that flowed through the company by our consumers went from around $60 billion a week to $mid-40 billion a week and that can bounce around depending on the week runs and where it is in the monthly cycle. But you saw it slow down.” Bank of America CEO
