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Private-equity firm TPG is acquiring Crunch Fitness through its growth-equity unit. Started in New York’s East Village in 1989, Crunch owns and operates more than 300 fitness centers across the U.S., Canada, Australia and Spain. Crunch began franchising in 2010—a move that Mr. Rowley said was “monumental” to the company’s growth. The franchise model has propelled the chain’s growth domestically and internationally. Today, about 50 locations are corporate-owned and nearly 300 are franchised under 88 franchise owners.With TPG Growth, Crunch will continue to expand its footprint and offerings. Mr. Rowley said the gym operator has focused on upgrading the interior of its locations and providing exercise classes, carving out a niche in the premium segment of high-value, low-price health clubs. The HV/LP model refers to facilities that offer a variety of amenities at affordable prices. Crunch is among the latest health club chains to trade hands in a sector that has become a robust landscape of private-equity activity.

Planet Fitness, Inc. (NYSE: PLNT) today announced that it has opened its 2,000th location in Colorado Springs, Colorado on E. Woodmen Rd. on December 31st, 2019. The Company also opened its 2,001st store on December 31, 2019, bringing its 2019 total store openings to a record 261.

Scenario #1 – Containment by March: The virus outbreak is contained by end-March and production disruption is limited to the first quarter. Policymakers in China and Asia move to provide meaningful fiscal and monetary support, with China expanding its fiscal deficit by 1.2 percentage points, keeping it high for the second year running. Global growth dips to an annualized rate of 2.5% in the first quarter, down from 2.9% in the fourth quarter, 2019, but recovers meaningfully from the second quarter onward.

Scenario #2 – Escalation in new geographies, disruption extends into the second quarter: In this scenario, new cases continue to rise in other parts of the world, before peaking by the end of May. The disruption extends into the second quarter, affecting corporate profitability in select sectors, risking the emergence of corporate credit risks. If the dislocations in asset markets also persist into the second quarter, a sharp tightening in financial conditions may mark a tipping point, exacerbating the impact on growth via weaker corporate confidence, falling capital expenditures and cutbacks in hiring. In response, policymakers around the world would step up easing measures, with fiscal policy in Asia and Europe and monetary policy in the U.S. doing the heavy lifting. Today, the Fed announced an unexpected half-point rate cut and our Chief U.S. Economist, Ellen Zentner, expects the Fed to cut rates again by a quarter-point at its April meeting, with the risk of an earlier action given the “fluidity” of the situation. In this scenario, global growth averages just 2.4% in the first half of 2020, but starts to pick up in the third quarter.

Scenario #3 – Persisting into third quarter, escalating recession risks: The outbreak’s global disruption continues to spread into the third quarter, encompassing all the large economies. China faces a renewed rise in new cases as it restarts production. The extended disruption to economic activity damages corporate profitability and brings about a rise in corporate credit risks and significant tightening in financial conditions, which exacerbate the slowdown in global growth. Central banks will embark on a renewed easing cycle, with the potential for a coordinated response. In this scenario, we expect the global weighted average monetary policy rate to dip to its lowest level since 2012. The Fed would extend its cuts from March-June and could become more aggressive and take rates to close to the lower bound by the third quarter. The fiscal response across key developed and emerging economies also becomes more aggressive, with China taking up two percentage points of fiscal expansion. The cyclically adjusted primary fiscal deficit for China and the G4 nations (Brazil, Germany, India and Japan) widens to 5.1% of GDP in 2020, from 4.1% in 2019. Global growth stays weak (i.e., below 2.5%) between the first and third quarters.

Just how bad will the new coronavirus be? I can’t answer that question, but I have observed the debate splitting into two broad camps: Call them the “growthers” and the “base-raters.” The term growthers refers to the notion of exponential growth, and indeed the number of Covid-19 cases appears (by some accounts) to be following an exponential pattern. Some scientists have estimated that the number of cases doubles about every seven days. If you play that logic out, it is easy enough to see how people might be complacent at first, then in a few months there is a public health crisis . . . the growthers find it easy to imagine that the number of cases might overwhelm the capacity of the U.S. health care system. Even if you think a speedy American (or more likely Singaporean) response argues against this scenario, it is harder to be equally sanguine about all the world’s nations, most of which are much poorer and have lower-quality public health systems than the U.S.

Of course, that process of doubling won’t go on forever. At some point, the number of people who have already been exposed to Covid-19 would become so large that their immunity could lower the subsequent rate of spread. Furthermore, society would adjust by having fewer large gatherings — many conferences already are being canceled — and by taking other precautions . . . The base-raters, when assessing the likelihood of a particular scenario, start by asking how often it has happened before. That is, they estimate its base-rate likelihood. And history shows that major pandemics have lately been rare. The SARS and Ebola outbreaks largely petered out, HIV-AIDS was of a very different nature, and the 1957 and 1968 flu epidemics are now distant memories. Base-raters acknowledge the exponential growth curves for the number of Covid-19 cases, but still think that the very bad scenarios are not so likely — even if they cannot exactly say why. They view the world as hard to model, and think that parameters do not remain stable for very long.

To understand how the spread of such a disease can be contained, it helps to break R0 down to its constituent parts. A simple formula that I got from Buckee is: the probability of infection given contact with an infectious person (b), multiplied by the contact rate (k), multiplied by the infectious duration (d) In some cases you can shorten the infectious duration with treatment. Quarantining people once you know they’re infected effectively shortens it, too. Variables b and k, meanwhile, are clearly dependent on behavior. The probability of infection is reduced by things like frequent hand-washing, replacing handshakes with fist bumps and such. The contact rate is reduced by staying home. By putting much of the country on lockdown, Chinese authorities reduced the contact rate enough that Covid-19’s R0 in the country fell below one. They also incurred huge economic and social costs. Now, as China begins to go back to work, the big question is whether a less-draconian approach can keep the disease in check or whether it will just start spreading again. That’s the big question in the U.S., Europe and pretty much everywhere else on earth too. It can’t be answered entirely by professional epidemiologists, either.