The John Hopkins University Coronavirus Global Cases Monitor shows that the mortality rate of the epidemic is very low. At the close of this article, 83,774 cases, 2,867 deaths and 36,654 recovered. It is normal for the media to focus on the first two figures, but I think it is important to remember the last one. The recovered figure is more than ten times the deceased one. This should not make the reader ignore the epidemic, but it is also worth reading the scientific study that shows that the death rate in citizens under 60 is less than 1.3%, 0.2% in young population, and on average it is a maximum of 4% (“The Epidemiological Characteristics of an Outbreak of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Diseases”, February 2020).

In a previous post, we mentioned that stagflation is a risk that central planners are ignoring. However, this risk is not just an isolated challenge focused on economies like Mexico, India or Argentina. Even in countries like Germany and Japan the trend of inflation, particularly in non-replicable goods, is diverging from economic growth. Inflation is picking up, while growth is slowing down.