In December 2019 in China a new flu showed up in Wuhan. At first the government downplayed its dangers finally under pressure they admitted it was an epidemic and started shutting things down as fast as possible.
In Italy, the USA and the UK the story was the same. I’m seeing a pattern. Perhaps the people who govern knew that to attempt to mitigate the spread of the disease was a fools errand so they thought it was more important to try to stop the spread of panic and the subsequent economic collapse.
What the goverment didn’t account for, and they should have, was the combination of the public’s fear reflex, the Media’s need to sensationalize everything and Social Media’s ability to spread anything sensational . The simple example of how this happens is: If on an airplane flying through turbulence one person screams probably nothing happens. If ten people scream it can quickly become a screaming contagion.
I predicted three weeks ago on March 4 that “The Corona Virus is not going to be a terrible world-wide epidemic. The Corona Virus is not going to cause a world-wide depression. Keep Calm and Wash Your Hands.”
I’m going to double down on that prediction. The Dow won’t go below 14,500 and less than three million people worldwide will die from the Corona Virus. Roughly one in three thousand.
Always certain, often wrong.