It is March 1, 2020. The headlines right now are the Democratic presidential nomination process, the Coronavirus, a tumbling stock market, and Trump’s presidency. The four big headlines are deeply intertwined with one another. I lost over forty thousand dollars in the stock market last week, so all of this hits close to home for me. Honestly, put my retirement back a year or so.
On the Coronavirus front, I am in the minority opinion on the front of the Coronavirus. Most people believe that the threat of the Coronavirus is all media hype, and that the media is at fault for generating the mass panic, which is in turn crushing the stock markets. The decline in the stock market due to a global crisis is a situational reality.
The viruses that have raised concerns in the past have had high fatality rates (upwards of sixty percent), while the fatality rate for the Coronavirus is roughly 2 to 3 percent, depending on which media outlet you are listening to. So, why is the virus such a huge concern? The severity of the symptoms from the previous virus meant that the virus was quickly detected, and people were quarantined and treated. The key is the containment of the outbreak. From my own research, the Coronavirus is a huge threat to the world because we have failed to contain it. The low mortality rate from the virus is the driver of the reason that it is so widespread. Many people that are infected with the virus show little or no symptoms, and their are cases of the virus popping up all over the world.
The reality is that we can no longer contain the virus, and that a vaccine and or treatment is our next and only options. If a vaccine were developed right now, would it put an end to the spread? I do not think so; I think that a significant percentage of people in the world are already infected.
Some experts have written articles that suggest that 70% of the world’s population will become infected with the Coronavirus. Suppose that number is grossly exaggerated, and that in reality only 25% of the 7.5 billion people in the world are infected, and then conservatively 2% of those infected do not survive. That means that there would be 37,500,000 deaths. This would certainly have lasting effects on the world, and there would likely be concentrations of deaths in countries with less advanced medical services.
What do I plan to do? Nothing really. I am more vigilant than ever about washing my heads. I am not going to stop traveling, and I am not going to stop investing in the stock market. I am simply going to try and stay as informed as possible, and I am going to continue to pray. That is all most of us can do.