I’m unable to answer the question posed. This piece comes out of Norway, so no particular American or political slant. It’s more of an international piece:
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Coronavirus WILL impact the economy.
We don’t know how much. We don’t know how bad the virus will spread. Its anyones guess. I think the market is already aware of all this and factoring it in to varying extent based on peoples best guess on what might happen.
I’d tell you that worst case you should be stocking up on canned food and bullets but I suspect your closets are full already. 
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Moi? You talkin’ to me?
Actually, no, I’m not a prepper. Do still have my silver eagles. That’s about it.
Also have a well and septic and a generator. But you need those things just to live day to day here where I do, in the country, 'specially in winter.
All my clocks are battery powered. Is that prepping? Nope. Just get fed up resetting the clocks what with us losing electric power so often.
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Death rate does not suggest yet to me to do anything financially about it. It currently is 4 times lower than SARS although it has a slightly longer incubation period.
We had water and canned food stored (enough for two weeks roughly) just in case of storm/power outages and I think that’ll do. The only thing I’ve restocked was a pack of breathing masks. Probably should have gotten more but I actually got them for flu season a month ago rather than COVID-19.
So then your closet is full of batteries for your clocks? #batteryprepper
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I converted to rechargeable batteries a long time ago because they end up being much more cost effective than non-recharcheables, and they are more green as a bonus. However, during a long term grid failure they would require a generator to recharge. Living on the grid I don’t have a backup generator.
CDC commenting that they’re basically expecting containment to fail, and it’s buying time to understand the virus better for treatment.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/health/coronavirus-cdc-robert-redfield-gupta-intv/index.html
“We don’t know a lot about this virus," he said. “This virus is probably with us beyond this season, beyond this year, and I think eventually the virus will find a foothold and we will get community-based transmission.” “The containment phase is really to give us more time. This virus will become a community virus at some point in time, this year or next year," Redfield said.
Hopefully he’s wrong.
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Buying time may also help with vaccine development. The novel coronavirus is 80-90% similar to SARS so I guess they hope to take all the research that happened on SARS and use it as base for a potential vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Still that could take years and it’s easy to imagine containment only delaying the inevitable spread.
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Like I stated in the individual stock thread, I believe this will impact the world economy moderately and I have pull out some equity in alignment with my believe. Specifically, I believe the supply chain will be impacted.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and see how wrong I’ll be.
On the postitive side, if like say a billion people die from the virus, it would probably help with the global warming problem and maybe give the surviving population an additonal decade or four to deal with the global warming issue. A billion people is like 1 in 7 or 1 in 8, I think.
But I guess in reality, it will never get that far, as the number of deaths gets higher and higher. People will go crazy in forcing the government into action and towns/city/states/countries will all be in lockdown – martial law.
Wait, have we seen this show before? Z Nation? Van Helsing? The Last Ship?
Besides, the I think the death rate is only like 2%. So unless every person on the planet was infected, nothing like the above (in my message) will happen – not even close. As for the markets… there will be some fluxuations but I think in general, it won’t change too much and if did, it would only be for a short time (a year, maybe two) before it rebounds.
And very importantly for global productivity, you have to look at the populations within that 2%. For the most part, it’s vulnerable folks (elderly and people with weak immune systems), many of whom are out of the work force. Most people (such as kids and young adults) with healthy immune system seem to recover with moderate symptoms only. We’ll see how it plays out for global GDP. It’ll definitely have a short-term impact. Remains to be seen whether this and global slow down will tip markets into a recession or merely a small correction.
The 2% mortality rate is very misleading (IMO) and I’m afraid it’s giving people a false sense of security. China is going to extreme to keep it from spreading and they also have quite good care. Just imaging for a minute if this get loose in the slum of India, mid-east, or Africa.
I’m hoping I’m not being an alarmist but sooner or later we will encounter a fast contiguous virus and we wouldn’t know if we over-reacted or not until it’s over one way or the other.
The measure that China is taking is going to hit their economy more than just slightly. How much that will ripple through is the question.
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That was true and honest when I wrote it. Given news out of Italy, though, I’m having second thoughts.
This thread was started to discuss threats to investments posed by the virus. Am enlarging thread now to include threats to us personally.
If I do decide to engage in a bit of prepping it will not be for the usual, historic, reasons some Americans do so. In other words, it will not be out of concern for some sort of non-specific, generalized threat. Instead, the stories out of Italy, of empty shelves, have got me pondering the best course forward. Any preparations I might make would have the coronavirus in mind specifically.
Trump is partly to blame, in my view. I don’t agree with wholesale importation of infected, or possibly infected, persons into North America, as he has done in some instances. I also take careful note of the announcement out of China that the incubation period for this virus might well exceed the fourteen days Trump and our American medical “experts” have taken as gospel. I suspect the Chinese know more about this than we do . . . . from bitter experience, of course.
So perhaps now is the time to fortify my home supply of essentials. Have not acted yet. Just am thinking about the possibility more seriously than I was a couple of weeks ago. This virus is making better progress than I anticipated it would make.
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The markets, and the stock market in particular, are reacting today to something. It could be the progress of the virus. It could be Bernie’s success in Nevada on Saturday, or it might be a combination of those two factors.
Whatever it is, I hope things turn around soon.
Neither of those factors look likely to “turn around”, just my $0.02 worth.
I was more and less alone in my concern when I first posted in the other thread on 2/1. While I’m not too concerned at this point of this becoming a pandemic (knock on wood), this is already causing a lot of supply chain issue that will ripple through. With the irrational high of the market right now, I feel there’s a high chance of this being the trigger to change the sentiment.
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Tip
This is somewhat pursuant to my post earlier today:
Trying to think things through and not go off half cocked. I’m an older person and I rely on availability of a couple of medicines to be OK. And of course this could apply to persons of any age.
Anyway, a great many of the components for today’s medicines come from China. I say “components” because those same preparations might nevertheless be manufactured in the USA or in Europe. But stuff coming out of China still plays a role.
Most of the food I eat is produced in North America . . heck, a lot of it right here in the USA. So I think there might be more time on food. But I will be renewing my prescriptions today as precaution against supplies becoming short on account of the China connection. Better safe than sorry.
News today has production in China of most anything becoming severely impeded. The Chinese are in a world of hurt.
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I agree. In isolation, coronavirus would likely not spook the markets that much but considering how much of a bull run they had been for 6 months, it may well be the trigger for a correction many had expected for a while.
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So what you’re saying is that health care costs are going to go down?