Suffice it to say that the COVID-19 coronavirus is not a very good guest.

It has been the uninvited guest in over 287,239 humans to date based on reported cases. But the actual number is probably many more than that. It has resulted in a pandemic, which is a bad thing for a guest to do. And the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) has proven that it can kill, having claimed at least 11,921 lives as of today, according to a Johns Hopkins University website. But obviously the virus doesn’t have little teeth or carry teeny-weeny sticks of dynamite. So, what exactly does the virus do once it is in your body and how can it kill?

The SARS-CoV2 is a respiratory virus, meaning that it can enter and invade your respiratory system, the system from your nose to your lungs that allows you to breathe in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide. There are many other kinds of respiratory viruses such adenoviruses, rhinoviruses, respiratory syncytial viruses (RSV), influenza, and other coronaviruses because your respiratory tract can seem like a wet, warm Walmart for these viruses. Some of these viruses tend to stay in your upper respiratory tract while others may make it down to your lower respiratory tract. Spoiler alert: SARS-CoV2 can do both.

Of note, just because two different types of viruses are both considered respiratory viruses, doesn’t mean that they are the same in other ways. The many viruses that cause the common cold including four other types of coronaviruses (OC43, HKU1, NL63, and 229E) behave very differently from the SARS-CoV2. Similarly, the SARS-CoV2 is not the same as the flu virus. Repeat, they are not the same. If you were to ask whether the flu and COVID-19 were equivalent, the answer would be no times no. As Yoda would say, the same they are not SARS-CoV2 and the influenza virus.

SARS-CoV2 gets into your respiratory tract when you breathe in respiratory droplets that have the virus or smear the virus on your face with your grubby fingers or some other contaminated object. The infection tends to begin inside your nose, you know that place in which you may periodically put your finger. The virus looks a little like either a morning star, one of those spiked medieval weapons, or a spiky massage ball. Note that even though the three of these things look similar don’t ever confuse them and use one for the other. The moment someone want to massage you with a weapon or a coronavirus, leave the spa.

Here is a illustration of the virus that’s causing a pandemic:

And for your reference, here is a spiky massage ball, which is not causing a pandemic:

The spikes on the surface of the virus consist of protein. Here’s an example of where protein is not good for you. These protein spikes are the key to the viruses’ ability to invade the cells in your respiratory tract. They help the virus find and bind to ACE2, a protein on the surface of your cells that’s the virus’s ace in the hole, so to speak, to get into your cells. This dirt bag virus then tricks your cell into helping it get inside the cell. It uses an enzyme called furin that is present in your cells to break the protein spikes in half, allowing the spikes to then guide the virus into your cells. How’s that for some political backstabbing?

Once inside your cells, the politics don’t end. This jerk virus hijack your cells’ machinery to make more copies of itself. So not only is the virus in your cells’ uninvited, it is doing the nasty there and using your stuff to do so. What a gross creep.

After these pieces-of-bleep viruses make more and more of themselves, they may invade additional cells lining your respiratory tract and begin to cause damage. They may have been able to get into your cells and knock virus boots for a while before your immune system even recognizes that something was amiss. That’s because your immune system probably has never ever seen anything like SARS-CoV2 before and hasn’t yet had the chance to set up specialized sentries and weapons ready to recognize, catch, and eliminate these filthy viruses. When it comes to SARS-CoV2, your immune system is bit like you were probably like in high school, quite naive and easy to fool, no matter how much energy you had and how many weights you lifted.

Thus, your immune system is likely caught with its virtual pants down, something that may also have happened to you in high school. Your immune system then scrambles to deal with the emergency with no real clear plan specific for SARS-CoV2. It quickly assembles and deploys a bunch of general troops to the lining of your respiratory tract, making it into a battleground.

Your startled immune system may be enough to deal with this douchebag virus if everything remains in your upper respiratory tract, that is above your trachea or windpipe. In such cases, your symptoms will likely resemble those of an upper respiratory tract infection. That is, if you even have any symptoms at all. As I wrote previously for Forbes, a study showed that 17.9% of those infected ended up having no symptoms throughout their infections. Upper respiratory symptoms can include a fever, a sore throat, nasal congestion, or a dry cough. As the World Health Organization (WHO) reported, symptoms begin an average of five to six days after the virus initially infected you with a range of one to 14 days.

You may think, OK, so far, SARS-CoV2 doesn’t sound great but it also doesn’t sound terrible. True, for a large percentage of cases, SARS-CoV2 and its damage remains uptown, north of the trachea. But let’s get down with what can go down when the infection proceeds down your respiratory tract into your respiratory tree and lungs.

Shortness of breath, chest pain or tightness, a deeper cough, and other difficulties breathing can be signs that these sons-of-viruses have made it to your lower respiratory tract. These symptoms can come from inflammation of your respiratory tree, otherwise known as your bronchial tree, the set of pipes that carry the air that you breath in and out of your lungs and allow you to sing Rolling in the Deep.

These sleazeball viruses may not stop at your bronchial tree. At the end of your respiratory tract are a bunch of balloon-like structures. No, not a collection of celebratory balloons to congratulate oxygen for reaching all the way down there. Rather, these are alveoli, which may sound like a pasta dish but instead are membranous structures that fill with the air that you inhale. Here is an illustration of some alveoli:

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As you can see in the picture, alveoli are also intertwined with a network of blood vessels, represented in red and blue. These blood vessels bring blood from the rest of your body that is low in oxygen and high in carbon dioxide, a waste product of metabolism. The alveoli serve as swap markets or little eBays where oxygen from the air that you breathed in is exchanged with the carbon dioxide in your blood. The carbon dioxide goes into the alveoli, where it may be exhaled up through your respiratory tract and out through your nose and mouth. The blood that is newly infused with more oxygen subsequently travels to the rest of your body to provide all of your cells with the oxygen that they need to do stuff like live and help you take selfies of yourself.

You can see how your lungs are so important and should be among your top five favorite organs. When your alveoli don’t work properly, your body can become starved of oxygen and unable to get rid of carbon dioxide. Things can quickly go downhill after that happens.

If the viruses and the resulting battle make it down to your lungs and alveoli, it can become a pneumonia. Pneumonia is when your alveoli become inflamed and get filled up with fluid, pus, and other types of gunk. Gunk is a technical term for cells and other stuff. This can happen in one or both of your lungs, assuming that you have no more than two. Developing a pneumonia is when the infection gets really serious. The word pneumonia should never be followed by no more than “I will just walk it off” or “rude, well that’s annoying.” If you suspect that you have a pneumonia, any kind of pneumonia, contact your doctor immediately.

Of course, unless you have an X-ray machine in your home, you can’t tell for sure if you have a pneumonia. Therefore, be aware of possible symptoms such as a high fever, chills that may be accompanied by shaking, coughing up mucus that’s greenish, yellow, or bloody, chest pain, shortness of breath, and other breathing difficulties. You may also feel tired, have a loss of appetite, and suffer sweating episodes. If you start turning blue or becoming confused, those are signs that you may not be getting enough oxygen through your lungs. Turning blue is never a good sign unless you are a member of Blue Man Group. If you do turn blue, go to the emergency room immediately as opposed to go to the emergency room casually. If you are a member of Blue Man Group, please say something.

When the infection has reached your lungs, your panicked immune system can behave like an adolescent. Sure, your immune system can continue to battle the virus, but it can also be too excitable and thus end up of making matters worse. There can be a lot of, shall we say, premature activation. Your immune system can end up quickly sending more and more troops to the area, cascades of different cells and chemicals, that end up firing all over the place in random directions. This may not even root out the invader and at the same time cause additional damage to the cells in your respiratory tract. As you probably learned in high school, telling someone this frenzied to calm down probably won’t work.

The other problem is that while your immune system is battling this scoundrel virus, other nasty microbes such as bacteria can sneak into your lungs and cause havoc as well. This is analogous to when a bouncer is occupied by an unruly guest and other people are able to sneak into the nightclub. These new invaders then can cause secondary infections that subsequently flourish quickly because your defenses are currently occupied. Such infections can end up being life threatening as well.

As the damage to your lungs continues, you may develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which is when your lungs have suffered so much widespread injury that you start running out of functioning alveoli to do the gas exchange work. The acronym ARDS is easy to remember because it sounds a bit like “argh.” If the damage gets to the point that your lungs can no longer effectively exchange enough oxygen and carbon dioxide, you go into respiratory failure and need a ventilator to help you breathe. In such cases, a ventilator is not an optional thing like dressing on a salad. It is an emergency measure to keep you alive. That’s why doctors are so worried about ventilator shortages right now. When you are in respiratory failure, it’s not as if you can take a number and wait for a ventilator to become available. Being out of ventilators is not the same as being out of stock of Fifty Shades of Grey books or hoodies. People will die without enough ventilators.

Being on a ventilator is still not the worst that can happen. Your immune system, you know that naive adolescent that’s been prematurely randomly firing, can go even more haywire. Real trouble occurs when your immune system begins to send chemicals and cells to not only your lungs but all over your body. The destruction then extends beyond your respiratory tract. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describes sepsis as “the body’s extreme response to an infection. It is a life-threatening medical emergency.” Your blood pressure starts to drop, your organs starts to fail. This is DEFCON 1 for your body and possibly a point of no return.

Most people with COVID-19 don’t go down this path. According to the Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), approximately 80% of those with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 end up having mild-to-moderate disease. Mild disease tend to last about two weeks.

However, based on this report, a not insignificant 13.8% of those with laboratory confirmed COVID-19 have severe disease. It can take three to six weeks to recover from severe disease, if you even do recover. Deaths, unfortunately, continue to occur.

So what are the chances of death if you have COVID-19? A CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published on March 18 presented data on the 4,226 COVID-19 cases in the U.S. that had been reported to CDC as of March 16. Of these cases, 2,449 of these patients had a known age: 6% were 85 years or older, 25% were between 65 and 84 years old, 18% between 55 and 64, 18% between 45 and 54, 29% between 20 and 44, and 5% between 0 and 19.

As you can see, the cases have spanned the age groups of the adult population. However, the case fatality rate, which is the percentage of cases who ended up dying, was substantially higher for those 85 years and older with 10% to 27% of them not surviving. This obviously sounds very high, but keep in mind that these were cases that were diagnosed and reported to the CDC. Without more widespread testing, it is still unclear how many cases of COVID-19 had already occurred in the U.S. as of March 16. The case fatality rate for those between ages 65 and 84 was 3% to 11%, lower but still quite significant. The case fatality rate dropped to 1% to 3% for those between 55 and 64 years of age and below 1% for those between 20 and 54 years of age. No one 19 years old and below passed away.

So far, case fatality rates have continued to vary somewhat widely. In a press briefing on March 3, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had said that “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died.” A study that’s currently under review at the journal Nature Research analyzed publicly available data on laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections in mainland China and came up with a 1.4% probability of dying from the infection after developing symptoms. Therefore, more data and studies are necessary to resolve these discrepancies in reported case fatality rates.

Regardless, all of the estimates so far remain far above the case fatality rates for seasonal influenza, which tends to be below 0.1%. This new coronavirus may have some similarities to the flu virus in that it is a respiratory virus and can kill you. But it is not the flu. Second verse same as the first, SARS-CoV2 am not the flu. The flu SARS-CoV2 is not. It is indeed something completely new and very different. And that’s the problem.

Policy rate: 13.5%
Inflation rate: 11.6% (October)
Excess crude account stood at $324.54 million as of November 20

Nigeria’s central bank is likely keep its rate on hold for a fourth meeting even as inflation jumped to a 17-month high.

That’s as policy makers look for ways to jump-start an economy projected to grow just 2% this year. Governor Godwin Emefiele has said the bank won’t consider cutting rates before inflation slows to the 9% ceiling of the target band.

“The bank is focusing more on growth than inflation and currency at the moment,” said Wahab Mustapha, an analyst with Cordros Securities.

Naija247news.com earlier reported that Annual inflation was 11.61% in October, up from 11.24% in September, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday — the highest rate since May 2018. Consumer inflation had dropped to it lowest in almost four years in August.

A separate food price index showed inflation at 14.09% in October, compared with 13.51% a month earlier.

“This rise in the food index was caused by increases in prices of meat, oils and fats, bread and cereals, potatoes, ham and other tubers, fish and vegetables,” the statistics office said in its report. “The rise in food inflation does suggest that border closures may have played a part in temporarily pressuring prices higher,” said Razia Khan, chief economist for Africa and the Middle East at Standard Chartered.

Shoppers at a market in the capital, Abuja, told Reuters the price of many food items, particularly rice, had risen in the last few weeks.

“Food items are very expensive in the market. When you go to a store they will tell you that is because the border is closed,” said housewife Naomi Nguher, who said she was given this reason for high rice prices at four different shops.

Sherifat Ajala, a rice wholesaler in the commercial capital Lagos, said Nigeria’s bad roads were delaying the transportation of the grain, further preventing the supply from meeting high demand.

“Trucks will spend almost two or three weeks on the road before they bring the rice,” he said.

Last week the West African country, along with neighbouring Benin and Niger, agreed to set up a joint border patrol force to tackle smuggling between the nations after a meeting between their foreign ministers.

The central bank is due to set its benchmark interest rate next Tuesday. The bank, which has targeted single-digit inflation, held its main interest rate at 13.5% at its last meeting, in September.

Earlier in the month a deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and a member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), have expressed fears that the persistent fall of Nigeria’s external reserves in recent times may induce exchange rate crisis and trigger capital outflows from the country.

Joseph Nnanna and Robert Asogwa, deputy governor in charge of economic policy and an MPC member respectively, expressed fears in their personal statements at the last meeting of the MPC seen by Naija247news

Nigeria’s excess crude account
Nigeria’s excess crude account stood at $324.54 million as of November 20, the accountant general said on Thursday.
Reviewing the external reserves movement, Nnanna said external reserves had trended downwards in recent months, declining from US$43.971 billion as at July 31, 2019 to US$ 41.79 billion as at September 16, 2019 or by US$ 2.181 billion or 4.9 percent.

Data from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has since shown that the reserves shed $2,243,157,059 in October, moving from $44,305,099,104 on the last working day of September to $42,061,942,045 as at October 30, 2018, the largest fall since 2018.

The reserves depreciation reflects weakening oil prices and CBN interventions in the foreign exchange market to ensure exchange rate and price stability.

“Although this stock of reserves could finance over 9 months of 36 imports of goods and services at end July 2019, there is need to watch this level considering that the reserves stock at the end of June 2019 could finance over 12 months imports.

“More importantly, the level of reserves has implications for capital inflows and outflows. A weakened net capital inflows position, due to weakening oil prices and external reserves position is helpful to exchange rate stability or the easing of monetary policy stance.

“This thus suggests the need to avoid monetary policy responses that could worsen the capital flows position and, hence external reserves and exchange rate stability,” Nnanna submitted at the last meeting of the MPC.

Asogwa, in his submission, explained that some considerable pressures still exist as the conditions of external reserves and current account balance seemed to have worsened in between the MPC meetings.

The oil savings account, which holds dollar reserves from sales of crude above the assumed benchmark price, contained $1.92 billion as of June 2018.

“CBN staff report shows that gross external reserves as at end of August 2019 declined by 4.7 percent when compared to the levels at end July and there are expectations of additional declines by the fourth quarter of 2019.

“There are, however, fears that this declining trend in external reserves may affect exchange rate stability in the near future,” he said.

The country’s foreign reserves, which saw a remarkable surge in 2018, following improved oil prices, and hitting $47.8 billion in June, has begun to take a downward turn due to shocks from the US market.

“Given the increase in inflation, we now expect that policymakers will leave their key rate on hold,” John Ashbourne, senior emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics, said in a note on Monday.

By Mahmoud Habboush and Emele Onu

Other products may follow, Lagos exchange CEO Onyema says

Lobbying government to exempt securities trade from tax

The Nigerian Stock Exchange, Africa’s second-largest bourse, plans to introduce trading in financial derivatives next year as it seeks to deepen the market.

“We will launch with equity index futures and then grow the list from there,” Chief Executive Officer Oscar Onyema said in an interview in Abu Dhabi Tuesday. The exchange plans to introduce futures and options to enable investors to hedge and manage risks, he said at the Africa Investment Summit organized by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Nigeria is seeking to encourage trading in the wake of a 14% slide in its benchmark index this year, the fourth-worst performer among 94 global equity gauges tracked by Bloomberg. While efforts to introduce derivatives in the past were hampered by the lack of a central counter-party clearing house, one has now been set up and the Lagos bourse is seeking a license for it from regulators, Onyema said.

Onyema has long been floating plans to introduce derivatives trading since his appointment in 2011, but has continually delayed its launch.

The Lagos stock exchange is also in talks with regulators to increase the share of pension fund investment into equities, to raise the current allocation to stocks at 4.95%, Onyema said. There are already signs that stocks are starting to “rally a little bit” thanks to an inflow of pension-fund money after the Central Bank of Nigeria tightened restrictions on which investors could trade its high-yielding, short-term, fixed-income debt securities.

The bourse is also lobbying President Muhammadu Buhari’s government to offer tax breaks to companies and exempt securities transactions from value-added tax to boost investment, according to Onyema. Nigeria, which vies with South Africa as the continent’s biggest economy is seeking to expand tax revenue amid a decline in income from crude oil, which contributes the bulk of the nation

Bloomberg

The National Pension Commission (NPC) recently released its report on pension fund assets for the
third quarter of 2019 showing that the total value of pension assets rose quarter on quarter (q-o-q)
by 2.76% to N9.58 trillion in September 2019 from N9.33 trillion in June 2019.

According to the report, most of the pension fund assets were
invested in FGN securities as its share of the total assets stood at 71.43% (or N6.84 trillion) in
September 2019, from a 69.55% it printed in June 2019.

Also, the Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) piled up money in Local Money Market
Securities (LMMS), although its share of the total assets was flattish q-o-q at 11.21% (or N1.07 trillion) in September.

Total invested fund in Corporate Debt Securities as a percentage of total pension fund assets stood at 6.49% (or N0.62 trillion) in September 2019 from 5.42% in June 2019.

However, funds invested in Real Estate Properties as a fraction of the total pension fund assets dropped to 2.42% (or N0.23 trillion) from 2.68% (or N0.25 billion) in the period under review.

Similarly, we saw Cash and Other Assets which constitute 0.28% (or N26.47 billion) of the total pension fund assets in September 2019 declined from 2.30% (or N214.21 billion) in June 2019.

Further breakdown of the N6.84 trillion FGN Securities revealed that investment in FGN Bonds, by the PFAs gulped N4.48 trillion in September 2019, rising from a N4.44 trillion it recorded in June 2019.

Investment in Treasury Bills rose to N2.26 trillion in September 2019, from N1.94 trillion in June 2019; however, investments in Sukuk and Green Bonds were relatively low as their respective shares of allocated pension assets stood at N80.53 billion and N13.38 billion in the quarter under review.

Also, the breakdown of investment in LMMS showed that more pension fund assets were invested in Banks (which include Open Market Operations, OMO, and DMBs fixed deposits) than in commercial papers.

Funds invested in Banks, constituting 88.79% of investment in LMMS, rose to N0.95 trillion in September 2019 from N0.94 trillion in June 2019 while investment in commercial papers, constituting 11.21% of investment in LMMS, increased to N0.12 trillion from N0.11 trillion.

Meanwhile, pension fund assets investment in the domestic equities market moderated to N0.49 trillion in September 2019 from N0.54 trillion in June 2019; thus, reducing the weight of total pension funds in local equities market to 5.13% from 5.76%.

Nevertheless, the equities market received some of “patronage” from “RSA FUND 11” as its share (N0.33 trillion) of the total pension fund investment in equities stood at 61.11% in September 2019.

Nigeria’s Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index 65.00 62.50 60.00 57.50 55.00 Source: NBS, Cowry Research

Non-Manufacturing Composite PMI
Manufacturing Composite PMI
The increased investment by PFAs in FGN Securities, especially FGN Bonds, was purposely to take advantage of the high yield in the bonds market as at September 2019.

With the benefit of hind sight, it is apparent that pension money managers took the right decision then given the crash in fixed income yields.

Meanwhile, treasury bills across different tenor buckets that matured this week were mostly refinanced at single-digit rates by CBN.

As there will be no T-bills auction in December 2019, we expect the current demand for T-bills to spill over to the bonds market; hence a reduction in bond yields is anticipated for most maturities.

More so, with the recent restriction of OMO transactions to only deposit money banks and foreign portfolio investors as well as the soon retirement of the current N950 billion worth of pension Investment in OMO bills, we expect bonds yields and rates to collapse going forward.

Hence, with the anticipated reduction in yields, we expect returns on pensioners’ funds to moderate in Q4 2019.

Thus, we opine that it is time the PFAs took advantage of the low stock prices and invest more in equities, given the high dividend returns in some selected stocks and the potential capital appreciation they also offer as stock prices have dropped way below their net book values.