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The coronavirus coming out of Wuhan is going to pop the “Everything Bubble.” It would be wrong to think of it as a minor pinprick. With somewhere between 35 and 50 million people in China already under quarantine in a dozen cities it would be a lot more like a thermonuclear blast that will flatten every bubble in sight. In all of recorded history no nation has ever managed an effective quarantine on so many people. With transportation screeching to a halt, the lives of millions of those people are at risk due to a simple lack of food or warm shelter.
Every form of sickness that can be passed on has a reproductive number. If a cold or flu in one person is passed on to only one other person, it has an R0 of 1. Below 1 the flu or cold will eventually disappear. Above 1 the sickness will be passed on to more and more people. A typical seasonal flu comes in at an R0 of 1.28; the 2009 flu pandemic came in at 1.48 and the deadly Spanish Flu of 1918-measured 1.80. Lancet believes this coronavirus is between 3.6 and 4.0. And it’s deadly.
This has the potential for being the biggest mass casualty event in world history. At the very least it will take down the financial system as the world economy grinds to a halt with efforts to contain the virus.
Now would be a great time to be prepared for a disaster bigger than any in history. On January 1, 2020 I posted a piece warning of a stock market crash.
It’s here and it’s now
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