(03-09-2020, 08:57 AM)StroudCrowd1 Wrote:

(03-09-2020, 08:51 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: The facts are, somewhere between 9 and 40 million people get the flu each year in the United States, in spite of all the vaccinations.   Approximately 10,000, give or take a few thousand, die of it each year.  The Covid-19 death rate is currently measured somewhere around 2%.   But even if the death rate is only 1%, if 10 million people get it, 100,000 people will die of it.  This is why people are alarmed.  It appears to be extremely contagious, and more deadly than the flu.  And we don't yet have a vaccine for it like we have for the flu.  

The race to contain it is going to hammer the economy.

How do we contain it?

Stay home.  Don't go on cruise ships.  Don't go to sporting events.  Don't travel to Europe or Asia.  Don't travel at all.  Stay home.  

Some countries will take extreme measures, such as Italy and China have done, and lock down entire cities.  Some countries are cancelling school.  Some universities are switching classes to online instruction.  

Stuff like that.  

And people who are on the fence about eating out, or buying a new car, or going on vacation, will decide to just wait until things clear up.  

These types of steps will hammer a world economy that was already burdened by excessive debt levels, and central banks that had already pushed interest rates down to the point where they can't push them much lower without going to negative interest rates.

No, we are not all going to die, and eventually, we will overcome this, but a lot of stock investors are deciding they'd rather not own stocks now, and so the market goes down.

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