In the Fourth Quarter of This Year, the Pandemic Enters a Period of Deep Anxiety

On July 21, Beijing time, the number of confirmed cases of coVID-19 worldwide has reached nearly 15 million, with more than 600,000 confirmed deaths.
For the first time in the past week, the number of confirmed cases worldwide has risen by more than 200,000 a day.
North America, Latin America and South Asia remain the three most important epicenters.
Sub-saharan Africa is growing strongly and is likely to overtake Western Asia as the new major growth region by the end of July.
South Africa, with a total of more than 300,000 confirmed cases, ranks in the top five.
After the United States, the four BRICS countries — Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa — have the highest number of confirmed cases, accounting for more than 55 percent of the global total.

Economic – regional differences in economic recovery from the epidemic are significant, and there is a lack of momentum for continued recovery since mid-June

Arhat hall set up a universal the evolution of the outbreak of the economic framework, under the framework of every country undergoing preparation – stage response – trough – recovery – the vaccine five stages, and established the outbreak of the global economy in this tracking system, daily tracking outbreaks in 132 countries and regions and economic conditions, accounting for 90% of the world’s population, 97% of the total GDP.
As of July 20, 72 of these economies were in recovery, a net reduction of two from the previous week.
Fifty-three countries, mostly developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, are still coping or at a low ebb.

Economies in recovery, mainly in East Asia, Oceania and Europe, have recovered to an average level of economic activity of 96%, which has been maintained at this level for several weeks.
The average economic activity level of the economies in response period and trough period increased by one percentage point to 92%, but this week, the cumulative number of infections in these economies increased by 1.68 million, the number of existing infections increased by 500,000. The overall epidemic prevention situation is very severe, and the challenge of steady economic recovery remains great.

The level of economic recovery in all regions is closely related to the trend of the epidemic. East Asia still stands out, while Oceania, due to the new wave of the epidemic, has seen its economic activity drop below 95%, on a par with Europe and Southeast Asia.
Latin America and South Asia remain below 90 per cent, while North America has picked up slightly since mid-July.
But overall, economic activity in all regions has not increased significantly in the past month or more, and the global epidemic economy has entered a deep state of anxiety.

Vaccine development has entered a critical period, the outbreak of the fourth quarter of the economy dawned

The vaccine period of the economic framework of The Epidemic in Luohantang

In an epidemic economy, a country has to zig-zg between the two dimensions of containment and economic contraction.
There is not a linear relationship between the duration of the trough and the recovery period and the impact on the economy. As the trough period lengthens, economic losses and negative social impacts may grow exponentially without appropriate responses.

In the five-stage evolution framework of the epidemic economy in Luohantang, the last stage is the vaccine stage. The main indication of this stage is the successful development of the vaccine, which is put into the world and covers the vast majority of the population to achieve true herd immunity and finally realize the end of the epidemic economy.
The pace of economic recovery depends in large part on breakthroughs in vaccine development.
The economy will not be decoupled from the epidemic until the vaccine deadline is met.
Both capacity and cost constraints, as well as differences in the level of demand and access systems among countries, dictate that the vaccine period will last a long time at the global level, until the second half of 2021 and beyond

Global vaccine development progress – a number of technical routes are advancing hand in hand, China has the highest diversity of vaccines, the United Kingdom and the United States have hit products

According to the COVID-19 vaccine tracking system at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, there are 218 vaccine development projects worldwide, at least 23 of which are in human clinical trials, spread more evenly across five different technology routes.
Of the 23 coVID-19 vaccines that have entered human trials, nine are from China, of which seven are independently developed in China, and the other two are developed by international cooperation and play a leading role.
The US and THE UK are ranked second and third with five and four, respectively.

In may this year, arhat hall academic committee member, Princeton university economics professor Markus Brunnermeier vaccine and U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence summers, dialogue, summers that considering the epidemic brought huge economic losses, the total cost of the vaccine development proportion is very small, so the government should fund vaccine research and development with unprecedented strength, but also should pay attention to the research and development in the direction of diversification, and ensure each direction have more than one candidate.
At present, globally, no less than three projects on the five major technology routes have entered the human testing stage, which is optimistic.
By country, China is the only country with at least four technology routes in human trials, and three of them have at least two r&d projects under way.

We have also noted that most of the leading technologies in China are traditional vaccine production technologies, such as the more mature inactivated vaccine technologies that have been used for influenza, measles and other vaccines, which may increase the probability of success.
And abroad enters clinical trial vaccine to be in the majority with new technology.
Some of the new vaccine technologies have shorter production cycles than traditional vaccines and can be produced in large quantities quickly to keep pace with the epidemic response.
At the same time, vaccines developed with traditional techniques produce antibodies more slowly in the body, while some new techniques of cellular immunity express themselves more quickly in cells, producing immune effects that can be used in special situations for emergency vaccination and post-exposure immunity.

According to Luo, the current trend of some redundancy and diversification in the global vaccine development process is necessary to deal with the still highly uncertain situation of virus transmission.
On the one hand, people with different backgrounds in different regions have different degrees and types of exposure to virus images.
On the other hand, we do not fully understand the novel Coronavirus origin, infection path, and the evolution or even mutation of the virus in the process of infection in the coexistence with human, even animals and hosts.
Thus, the effective response is to have multiple vaccines and therapeutics from different countries, companies and technology routes simultaneously to protect the potentially infected from novel Coronavirus.
This is also the fact that the current speed of vaccine development has been greatly accelerated and the time for large-scale clinical testing of vaccines has been greatly reduced, so that the overall production capacity can not only keep pace with the large global demand for coVID-19 vaccines, but also provide more targeted vaccines for different populations.

Could vaccines be the pacemaker for the global economy in the fourth quarter?

By mid-July, a number of vaccine research and development projects had entered the phase III clinical phase, showing a glimmer of hope that the epidemic economy would enter the vaccine phase as soon as possible.
In April of this year, WHO lowered the threshold for vaccine development in its published vaccine guidelines, agreeing that the vaccine would provide 50 per cent protection within six months for those exposed to novel Coronavirus at high risk to advance clinical trials and marketing approval of the vaccine.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently gave the same criteria for reducing the risk of infection and disease by at least 50 per cent compared with the placebo group.
Although a few drug companies are more optimistic, such as Pfizer inc. ‘s President, who said approval is possible early in the fourth quarter, the FDA says it won’t lower its standards and aims to have the vaccine on the market by the end of this year or early next year.
The vaccine under phase III clinical trial in China and the UK is also expected to end in the fourth quarter. The recombinant Novel Coronavirus vaccine developed in collaboration with Academician Chen Wei of The Chinese Academy of Military Sciences has become the world’s first vaccine with limited use.

The early development and approval of the first vaccine is of vital importance to the recovery of the global epidemic economy.
Arhat hall academic committee member, 2012 Nobel laureate Bengt Holmstrm at the end of June when the global more than 10 million confirmed cases, points out that will be coronavirus may never be eliminated, but the public and the market’s fear of virus can be reduced to tolerable levels, and only when fear is reduced greatly, the truly would be ready to return to normal.
The arrival of the first successful vaccine will largely calm fears.
So, while insufficient vaccine capacity remains an important limiting factor, if vaccine development goes well, it could be the pacemaker for global or some of the more advanced economies in the fourth quarter.

In the best scenario, if one or more of the vaccine research done on or before early in the fourth quarter, and success in the examination and approval, will be the major economies effectively cope with the next flu season in the northern hemisphere’s new outbreaks repeatedly provide vital protection, basic implementation that can ensure that relevant countries u-shaped recovery, thus the global economy may be in the whole year of 2020 to a better position to packaged.
However, if the corresponding R&D and approval cannot be completed until the end of the fourth quarter or early 2021, some economies may have a W-shaped recovery, or even an L-shaped recovery due to the structural damage of social economy caused by the long-term economic downturn.

The expected summer curbs on the spread of the virus have failed in many countries.
The fourth quarter is the last window of opportunity for 2020, with vaccines developed, approved and shipped around the world as quickly as possible.