Fiscal policy (e.g. the government buying tanks) absolutely affects the real economy.
The central bank doesn't control fiscal policy. It controls monetary policy. Monetary policy also affects the real economy, just indirectly.
But you're right that it doesn't give them much monetary room--I guess if/when the downturn comes resorting to fiscal stimulus be the only answer. Not that the GOP deficit chickenhawks have given any room there: remember when GOP was against deficits? US$ 1T later Pepperidge Farms remembers.
potentially, negative interest rates, that’s what [1]
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/070915/how-n...
I assume you meant “raise” instead of “cut” here.
If so, you are correct, and the question about what the fed does when the market corrects/crashes is why a lot of folks are wringing their hands right now.
Though inflation had remained low, so it's not clear that it was necessary to raise rates.
If you doubt the official numbers, the Billion Prices Project goes out scrapes price data, and it matched pretty well with the CPI:
No, even if the acheivable aggregate real expansionary impact of monetary policy were unbounded (which no one argues it is) we wouldn't all be rich because monetary policy also has a distributional impact. But, more to the point, having bounded real impact isn't the same as zero real impact.
Increasing the money supply is effectively a transfer of wealth from people who own/lend currency to people who owe/borrow it. It doesn't come without cost. It's effectively taxing one group and giving the money to another.
As for stimulating the economy, it works as long as the borrowers are making better use of the money than the lenders would have. In a time when you may need to e.g. build new factories somewhere else because existing ones are unavailable, that becomes more true than it was the day before, because the people who want to build new factories need money to do it and now that money is cheaper to get.
What it does is increase borrowing. All borrowing is really borrowing from the future, because at some point the money has to paid back. (Or have interest paid on it forever, which is effectively the same thing.) So what you get now you have to give back later, but that may be a beneficial transaction if you need it more now when some disruption is occurring than you would years from now after things have calmed down.
But only in the short term, since lenders will catch on and increase their interest rates to offset the inflation. As you said, you're transferring wealth from lenders to borrowers, which means a larger incentive will be needed to induce anyone (other than the Fed) to lend money. To maintain the effect you would not only need to maintain the inflation but also continually increase the rate of inflation to exceed expectations. That's a quick route to hyperinflation and worthless currency.
The Fed can keep lending at arbitrarily low rates long after every other lender has been driven from the market because they're "lending" newly minted currency at essentially zero cost, and moreover don't particularly care whether they make a profit. However, even they can't sustain ever-increasing rates of inflation without destroying all confidence in their own currency, and it's pretty hard on the other lenders. ("Lenders" including anyone with a savings account, or with a significant fraction of their net worth in currency rather than inflation-proof assets and other investments; the poor are thus hit harder than the rich.)
> ... the people who want to build new factories need money to do it ...
That's an over-simplification. The people who want to build new factories need materials and labor to do it, not money. Giving them more money doesn't increase the amount of material or labor available, though it may allow them to claim a larger share of the available goods provided they do so before the inflation becomes generally known and devaluation takes effect. Naturally, if they're getting a larger share then others are making do with less. It only works out to a net benefit under the assumption that you know how those goods should be put to work better than the people directly involved—despite apparently being unable to persuade people that your plan is better rather than resorting to underhanded tricks.
No, because the reason you lower interest rate targets are exactly the conditions which provide lower returns on alternative investments besides lending. You can only afford to raise rates for lending if you've got something better to do with the money.
A borrower can only afford to pay higher rates if they have something better to do with the money. Lenders can always afford to raise rates, as doing so increases their profit margin. The limiting factor there is competition from other lenders, but a factor like inflation affects all lenders equally. What they can't afford is lower profits in real, fixed-dollar terms due to inflation. Lower profits on lending => less money available for lending => higher prices (interest rates) for the remaining supply.
No, because lowering interest rates by 0.5% generally doesn't cause inflation to increase by 0.5%.
Moreover, most of the inflation from lower interest rates happens immediately. If you lower interest rates people borrow more money which causes some inflation, but to cause even more inflation people would need to borrow even more money, which they wouldn't do unless you lowered interest rates even further.
The level of outstanding debt (i.e. the money supply) goes up and then stays there until interest rates go back down and give people incentive to pay it back.
> As you said, you're transferring wealth from lenders to borrowers, which means a larger incentive will be needed to induce anyone (other than the Fed) to lend money.
Banks can borrow money from the Fed and lend it to other people. Also, when you lower interest rates it lowers the returns on everything else because people borrow money and use it to bid up securities, and then the now-smaller returns from issuing loans remain relatively attractive.
Notice that the US has had near-zero interest rates for over a decade and there isn't anything even resembling hyperinflation. But there is a whole lot more outstanding debt than there was when interest rates were higher.
> Giving them more money doesn't increase the amount of material or labor available
Sure it does, in the sense that available means in productive use rather than merely having physical existence.
If you pay people more they'll spend more time working and less time watching TV. They'll dig minerals out of the ground to make stuff with instead of leaving them in the ground. There is a difference between having something and doing something with it.
> It only works out to a net benefit under the assumption that you know how those goods should be put to work better than the people directly involved—despite apparently being unable to persuade people that your plan is better rather than resorting to underhanded tricks.
The entire premise of lending money is based on this being true. It's the assumption that some people have good ideas but not capital to fund them.
There are plenty of ideas that you can expect to turn $100,000 this year into $105,000 next year. If interest rates are at 4% they're viable, if they're at 6% they're not. Lowering interest rates makes more of those things viable.
It's not a matter of persuasiveness, it's a matter of transaction costs. Alice wants to start a company. She could borrow money and use it to pay salaries -- which is only possible if she can borrow at a sufficiently low interest rate. Or she could pursuade the workers to work all this year and not get paid until next year (when they'll get paid with interest). But then the workers would have to convince their landlords to let them live in their apartments without paying rent for a year, and the landlords would have to convince the government to let them defer paying property tax for a year, and the government would have to persuade the teachers to teach without pay for a year and so on.
Obviously borrowing the money from a bank is a lot more realistic.
100 Trillion Dollar bill anyone?
There is no argument that cannot or does not have long-term effects, and no we would not all be incredibly rich, as it absolutely costs something to increase to money supply.
When you increase the money supply you devalue each and every current piece of money in existence. Money (fiat) can be infinite but what you buy with it is not.
>Every underdeveloped nation would simply increase their money supply and poverty would end for ever.
No, it wouldn't. Have you heard of hyperinflation? A gallong of milk would simply cost $1000 dollars. Kind of like how milk used to cost 5 cents a gallon 50 years ago. The countries that do try what you are talking about, and there are plenty of examples, amazingly, all end up incredibly poor and economically devastated.
The argument that monetary policy cannot affect the real world economy is more about its limitations, where it cannot really make up for something like a months long interruption to international trade because the world's leading manufacturing nation has quarantined half its population.
The best it could to benefit the long term, I would think, is to make credit more available and cheaper to make it easier for companies and governments to weather the storm with minimal damage.
For example: who is going to outcompete American Airlines/United/Delta if all international flights are grounded or flight restrictions get worse?
Why would we care how robust our businesses are to such a rare event if we can mitigate it in other ways? You think it would be better to lose those businesses just for the chance at something better replacing them, just to avoid resorting to those mitigations?
Be well, friends.
A temporary boost to the market gives more time for the true long term impact to the supply chain to play out. It may turn out that the boost only gave a short respite but it may also turn out that it saved the market unneeded turmoil.
A short term boost also gives people a chance to take a breath, step back and take a more rational approach.
But this is still a good point: if the market really is overheated then short-term monetary policy won't change that, and we can expect a lasting hit regardless of how disease issues play out. And it's not necessarily going to be obvious what's market movement and what's disease-related; I wouldn't be surprised if some over-hyped companies seize this as a chance to lower guidance faster than they normally could without spooking investors.
There are reports of kidney damage and damage to fertility among men who have recovered. Are those true? We don’t know. We have no idea.
The rational response to a deadly virus with so many unknown factors is to hunker down, avoid mass gatherings, and exercise other precautionary measures. These precautionary measures mean fewer people traveling, going to the movies, going out to dinner, attending conferences, etc. There is nothing the Fed can do to blunt this reaction besides pour money into Coronavirus research and hope they find a vaccine or remedy before it drags the economy into a recession.
Please refrain from fearmongering. Yes, COVID-19 is serious, but dishonestly inducing a public panic only makes matters worse.
[1]: https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses
[2]: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-coronavirus-spreads-m...
[3]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se...
Case in point the incubation period from your own link. "Most estimates of the incubation period range from 1-14 days, most commonly around five days. These estimates are updated as more information becomes available."
How long does it remain on the surface. "It is not certain how long the virus survices on surfaces."
Can asymptomatic people spread coronavirus? "How often asymptomatic transmission is occurring is unclear."
How deadly is the coronavirus? "We don’t yet know."
Can I catch the virus by eating food prepared by others? "It's not clear if this is possible."
TLDR: We have decent guesses in some categories and in others we don't know at all. People acting like they know for sure the details of this virus are lying at worst and merely uninformed at best.
> Case in point the incubation period from your own link. "Most estimates of the incubation period range from 1-14 days, most commonly around five days. These estimates are updated as more information becomes available."
Yes, it continues to become more accurate. Initial reports thought the incubation period could be up to 20-30 days. Continued study of the virus has refined the numbers and will continue to do so.
> How long does it remain on the surface. "It is not certain how long the virus survices on surfaces."
Interesting that you purposefully leave out the rest of the quote:
"It is not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces, but it seems to behave like other coronaviruses. Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days. This may vary under different conditions (e.g. type of surface, temperature or humidity of the environment).
If you think a surface may be infected, clean it with simple disinfectant to kill the virus and protect yourself and others. Clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose."
> How deadly is the coronavirus? "We don’t yet know."
Again, you leave out the rest of the quote and this one has hard numbers behind it as the infection, recovery, and mortality rates are being tracked internationally.
"As of February 25, 2020, the reported confirmed cases and deaths in China suggest the mortality rate is roughly 3%. It is important to remember that early on in an epidemic there is a “tip of the iceberg” phenomenon where we overestimate more severe cases and mild or asymptomatic cases go unrecognized, so the mortality seems higher than the reality. That may be happening when we speak of up to 3% mortality. By contrast, SARS had a mortality rate of around 10%; the MERS mortality rate is closer to 30% to 40%. There appear to be many more COVID-19 cases confirmed than there were with SARS and MERS."
> Can I catch the virus by eating food prepared by others? "It's not clear if this is possible."
Yet another misleading partial quote.
"It’s not clear if this is possible, but if so it would be more likely to be the exception than the rule. That said, COVID-19 and other coronaviruses have been detected in the stool of certain patients, so we currently cannot rule out the possibility of occasional transmission from infected food handlers. The virus would likely be killed by cooking the food."
None of these are "guesses". They are scientific observations backed by evidence. Stop spreading misinformation. You claimed that we "know next to nothing about this virus" which is simply not true.
Researchers saying "we are not completely certain but the evidence appears to indicate X" is not logically equivalent to "we have no idea why X happens"
People need the truth, and they need time to be able to react to it before we're already in the midst of a bad situation.
A Harvard scientist predicted that 40-70% of the world could get this, and the death rate could be 1%. That rate is much higher among the elderly and the unwell.
A lot of people are going to die amidst the backdrop of a completely overloaded and mostly unprepared healthcare system. We need to acknowledge that.
I do not believe anything I've written is exaggerated or written from a place of fear.
You're right to highlight those aspects of the virus and I find them noteworthy as well.
However, the statistics I am most interested in is mortality rate and rate of asymptomatic infections.
I note with interest that among the 700+ infected on the cruise ship, there were 6 deaths as of yesterday - and this is among a relatively geriatric population. So, perhaps we see a mortality rate of <1% among a greater risk population.
I think the death rate will ultimately depend on whether everyone who needs hospital treatment can get it. And that's why I think the Diamond Princess may not be representative of what happens in the real world.
But, the demographics skewed older than the general population, and there were 3200 people on board in basically a worst case scenario for spread.
So 42/3200 is ~1% of a much older population.
Edit: link to China study summary below, but including it top-level here as well.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720...
>Also, the cruise ship cases aren’t all resolved outcomes yet.
No they aren't, but the vast majority have been symptomatic longer than the average time till hospitalization and the number in critical condition hasn't increased in days. It's very unlikely they'll get to anywhere near 20%. And this is in a more geriatric population.
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-720...
About 40% of the patients in that study weren't even tested. They were included based on symptoms that include severe pneumonia. The ones who were tested, sought testing because they displayed symptoms severe enough to seek treatment.
This is the very definition of selection bias, and there is absolutely no reason to pretend that a 20% hospitalization rate is a realistic outcome.
Yes, but the reason why the Diamond Princess is interesting is that we know exactly how many of them got infected. We don't know that about any other population.
Also consider my point that many, many of these cases are unresolved. Whereas the China study, which most health experts are relying on currently as our best guess - not the cruise ship — looks at resolved cases.
The number of undiagnosed cases is the great unknown that experts disagree on. It's also the basis for all the wild speculation out there.
Under normal circumstances I would say let's test a random sample of the population in some affected area. But as test kits are scarce doing that would probably be ill advised.
I also agree that there’s a wide range of possibility. But I’m responding to the claim there’s no data with a study from China’s CDC that most experts are citing as the best info we have right now. Is it perfect? No. But the Diamond Princess isn’t a scientific study — it’s a mess.
Edit: for a range of possible outcomes, this article is helpful:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/02/25/coronaviru...
At the low end are South Korea’s (mortality) numbers, at the extreme high Iran, and Italy aligning roughly with China’s study.
The tl;dr is we have a fairly wide range of possible outcomes, but Italy is lining up with China’s findings.
But with the flu we have large population studies, so we can estimate the number of likely infected based on the number seeking treatment. They study you are citing can't be generalized, and no one but you is claiming it should be used to estimate hospitalization rate.
Public health officials who are trying to produce estimates are using that study along with models of how many un-diagnosed cases might be out there to try to predict hospitalization rates. But they aren't naively throwing out your 20% number.
>But I’m responding to the claim there’s no data with a study
There is no data to support your claim of a possible 20% hospitalization rate. None, it doesn't exist. There is data to support a 20% hospitalization rate among people sick enough to seek treatment, and people sick enough to be clinically diagnosed.
>at the extreme high Iran, and Italy aligning roughly with China’s study.
Italy and Iran also likely have far more actual cases than confirmed.
>No. But the Diamond Princess isn’t a scientific study — it’s a mess.
The study you are presenting makes no attempt to predict the actual hospitalization rate among the general population. And the samples aren't random. It's more a mess than the numbers from the Diamond Princess.
Everyone on board the ship was tested, no sampling bias there. But even then, there is selection bias because the ship's population is older than the general population.
If 42 were critical, that doesn't necessarily mean they were the only ones who needed hospital treatment.
>If 42 were critical, that doesn't necessarily mean they were the only ones who needed hospital treatment.
Percent hospitalized isn't the thing to look at. It's percentage of people who need intensive care or a ventilator that matters.
Many people were hospitalized for observation. Some people received IV fluids. How many of those people were saved by IV fluids vs. just being a nice to have is unknown. But that kind of care can be done in mass tent hospitals or even at home.
Are these numbers still updated now that many (or all?) have left the ship? Where can I see those numbers?
>Many people were hospitalized for observation
Yes, but if fewer people had been under close observation in a hospital more might have died. Admitting only precisely those who turn critical is not realistic in my (lay person's) opinion.
I agree with you about the age distribution on the cruise ship though. This is very important to note.
Still, I have to wonder what share of the population can get hospital/ICU treatment at any given time.
I don't know about other places, but here in the UK hospital bed occupancy rates are dangerously high at the best of times. I don't know how many beds/ICUs can be freed up in an emergency. But I doubt it's anywhere near enough if everyone gets sick at the same time.
I hope someone is doing some modelling to find out how aggressively we have to slow down the rate of infection so that hospitals are not overwhelmed.
Your death count is incorrect. Several deaths occurred after cruise members returned to their home country, and are currently counted as deaths in their home country instead of the cruise ship.
Take for example: 78-year-old man in Perth - got infected on the cruise ship - but counted as a death in Australia.
The good news is assuming you trust China’s numbers new infections are down massively from a February 2nd peak. Deaths in China are also down significantly but less so, again assuming you trust their numbers.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-may-have-sprea...
But the vast majority are less recent than February 20th. Almost all of them have been showing symptoms for longer than the average time to hospitalization.
[0] direct link: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...
[1] posted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475060
Second, since this is an ongoing outbreak the CFR is a moving target. Your calculation assumes the ratio of deaths to recoveries remains what it is now for the ~40k active cases. However, the CFR by that calculation has been steadily falling. Additionally, since CFR is only based on diagnosed cases the struggles with testing capacity, particularly in the US, will distort it by biasing diagnoses towards more severe cases.
> The objectives as mandated by the Congress in the Federal Reserve Act are promoting (1) maximum employment, which means all Americans that want to work are gainfully employed, and (2) stable prices for the goods and services we all purchase.
> Following its meeting in January 2012, the FOMC issued a statement regarding its longer-run goals and monetary policy strategy. The FOMC noted in its statement that the Committee judges that inflation at the rate of 2 percent (as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, or PCE) is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve's statutory mandate.
The statistic influencers currently are China, South Korea and Iran.
Then it seems to help that people are more aware and numbers seem to be dropping. I'm short-term bearish, although it could change with an extreme outlier within the EU.
It also helps that I can see what a big corporation ( where I work) is doing and I don't see any panic. Rather creating awareness.
I'm also aware of the most vulnerable companies ( travel + flight) where a friend works and it seems to be okay, as in: "not as bad as the news seems to suggest", but nonetheless carefull.
This is not going to be the end of the world as we know it but I think it will take quite some more time before it's behind us.
This isn't happening in the rest of the world. ( Except some dictatorships)
Some minor outliers like you mentioned, eg. Italy. But these are getting handled. It will not spread anymore like it did in China.
It's possible that some parts will need extra handling, but sharing information is the key for handling this.
Yes, China did some weird stuff with information in the beginning, but it seems there is not really much reason to suspect they're hiding information anymore [1,2]. The responses by free-er nations have been much milder with more reliance on self-quarantine. Let's hope that that works. And let's hope there will be sufficient testing to stay on top of things.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2020/1/27/21082354/coronavirus-outbreak-...
[2] https://www.vox.com/2020/3/2/21161067/coronavirus-covid19-ch...
We will see what the best strategy will be, the hardest work is now for China, South Korea, Iran and Italy.
The rest will learn from them.
But are we close to full capacity?
There is also a question of short term vs. long term. In the short term if some things are made only in China they may become temporarily scarce. In the longer term either China will come back online or capacity will be created somewhere else (or both).
This is my opinion, not backed by hard data or numbers or anything else - just my opinion. I think that the world (or at least the west) became dependent on China's capacity. We outsourced and off-shored, and a bunch of factories closed and companies shut down. China didn't add capacity, it replaced capacity. So in the short term, if China shuts down, there's an actual shortage of capacity, because much of the other capacity is gone.
In the long term, as you say, sure, we can start back up here. It will take a while, but we can get there. The buildings didn't die, and the people who knew how to do it didn't all get lobotomies. In the medium to long term, we'll be fine, whether China comes back or not.
Note again: This is my guess. Anyone with real data, feel free to supply it.
Cutting rates further isn’t going to protect businesses without footfall from going under - they need propped up on a wide scale until the virus peaks and passes.
Theoretically a cut to zero might help but only if you’re giving guaranteed credit lines to every small business to get them through the worst of it - but how would that even work?
that's what zerohedge calls "the dead cat bounce" right?
Is there any question? 80% of the Chinese workforce has been sitting on the sidelines since mid-January. Production is just barely ramping up and I don't think we'll see full capacity until well into April, provided that COVID19 is truly contained/managed.
Edit: not sure about the downvotes. Here's a source about Foxconn production: https://twitter.com/onlyyoontv/status/1234855310428430337
More realistically, even if enough of them have antibodies to create herd immunity. (Via making it impractical for the virus to transmit to a vulnerable host)
I think a likely outcome is that the current outbreak dies down, then it either flares up again from some undetected cases or is reintroduced from another country. But then, with the initial media attention elsewhere and COVID-19 symptoms basically looking like the flu, they'll just let the sick die rather than re-introduce draconian quarantine measures.
As an RNA virus, it would be extremely difficult for SARS-COV-2 to establish persistence. I'm not aware of any known mechanism by which that could happen. It's been proposed that some COV's may have neurotropic capability [1] that might allow them to achieve latency, but it's just that -- a proposal.
;P
I jest, but I wonder about the difference between "natural" complex-systems-behavior recessions, and those that come from acute stimulus like war and pandemic.
Something like: is there a difference between people wanting to produce and consume but being "artificially" held back, versus an average lack of confidence in the markets causing slow-down?
Source: Page 12, paragraph 2. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-chi...
> The median incubation period was 3.0 days (range, 0 to 24.0 days)
Edited my post to include that source
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.28.20028068v...
"The mean incubation was 8.42(95% confidence interval [CI], 6.55-10.29) days... COVID-19 course was approximately 2 weeks."
Fairly small sample size of 55 patients, which means the reliability may be debatable, and giving figures to two decimal places is meaningless. (In fact any decimal places are meaningless, unless someone times the exact moment of exposure.)
That aside - it seems very unlikely that 24 day incubations will be common.
Broadly it seems most people who become symptomatic will show symptoms within 10 days and will recover within two weeks after the symptoms appear. A small percentage - mostly older and unwell - will become seriously ill, and an even smaller percentage will die.
Meanwhile the presence of untraceable infections strongly suggests that a significant number of people - possibly a majority - either don't develop symptoms at all, or don't consider them serious enough to require medical attention.
I don't see that supported by the CDC either though
There are several cases where the incubation period has been over 20 days. Maybe 90% of cases incubate for 14 days or less. Maybe 99% for less than 20.
14 days is not some magic limit.
There are case reports of it being far longer than 14 days:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-incubation/c...
> A 70-year-old man in China’s Hubei Province was infected with coronavirus but did not show symptoms until 27 days later, the local government said on Saturday, meaning the virus’ incubation period could be much longer than the presumed 14 days.
[1] Shennongjia, Hubei. Looks like it's a "county" with about 75k people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shennongjia
[2] For instance: he visited Wuhan, self-quarantined immediately after returning which limited his contact with others, then 27 days later developed infection. Every contact he did have was tracked and confirmed negative. That's total speculation, though.
Please help keep HN a nicer place by giving others the benefit of the doubt.
I'm calling into question /u/airstrike's legitimacy due to not being able to differentiate between monetary and fiscal policy in their explanation. This is because, you learn about what monetary and fiscal policy are very early on, like in an introductory economics course. It raises red flags when you are unable to differentiate the two. I mention the spelling of 'monetary' versus 'fiscal' and how different they are in order to argue that it's unlikely /u/airstrike made the mistake because of a grammatical error or say because they were typing too fast.
I apologize if I sound harsh here, but I think it's important that things like these are called out. While /u/airstrike might not purposely be trying to do it here in his/her comment, this is exactly the kind of thing that leads to misinformation spreading.
I will note that airstrike is not "unable to differentiate the two". They have quite clearly gone on to demonstrate that ability.
It is important to make sure false information doesn't circulate. But I don't think that excuses being "harsh".
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I've laid out what I think to be the issue between our perspectives. If you disagree, that's more than fine, but you've got to give me more than a "you're wrong" if you want to have a meaningful conversation.
From your behavior here you do not strike me a somebody currently ready to have a meaningful conversation on this topic. I'd suggest pointing a few people whose opinions you respect and who have a head for nuance at this discussion. Maybe they can help you.
if this was more like SARS with a 10% IFR, with equally high mortality rates among young people, then I would be very worried. But this virus seems to be the opposite. most factory workers fit in that cohort of people in that the virus effects the least so I don't see supply chains suffering.
I think supply chains are more affected by government attempts to contain the virus (quarantines/social distancing/restrictions on travel and trade) than by the virus itself, no?
On the margin, I'm still slightly bearish on the whole situation due to the combination of the virus' absurdly high infection rate[0] and its long incubation period (I'll let each one of you be the judge of how long that is...)
[0] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=infection+rate+sars+vs+coronavirus...