My Biggest Fear With The Coronavirus
Coronavirus is all we hear about these days and I apologize that I am adding fuel to that fire. I don’t want to talk about people loading up on paper towels, toilet paper and water. Which doesn’t make sense, your tap water isn’t contaminated and coronavirus doesn’t cause an upset stomach but I digress. The thing that scares me about the coronavirus is the fear it is causing. That fear causes people to make irrational decisions and those decisions can lead to economic downturns.
What Will The Lasting Effects Of The Coronavirus?
Now I am not a scientist or financial wizard but I think I can discuss the situation, share my worries and allow people to chime in with theirs. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
What I worry most about with the coronavirus is the impact it could have, long term, on the global economy. Especially any country or area that is highly dependent on the tourism industry. As fears grow people will be canceling travel, selling stocks (as today’s stock market shutdown shows) and begin making irrational decisions. That could have a lasting effect on the global economy.
Look at the airline industry, which has a ton of debt on their books right now, and how they are hemorrhaging sales over the last few weeks. They have tried to stopgap it with offering waivers for people that book flights now. This new crisis is coming pretty much a year after the Boeing 737 MAX issue, which is still unresolved. The max issue caused airlines to have route cancellations, delayed and cancelled flights etc. which cost them hundreds of millions of dollars. You pair that up with a worldwide virus and this could cripple them if it goes on for too long.
The very popular SXSW festival was just canceled after multiple companies pulled out. The festival brings hundreds of thousands of people to Austin Texas and is usually a massive windfall for local business owners, hotels and the conference center itself. If there were any businesses barely hanging on this could be the final nail in their coffin.
I think this is going to get worse before it gets better. The longer it goes on and the more the virus spreads the more the fear will spread.
Fear Leads To Panic
I have long believed that fear is usually worse than the actual thing people are afraid of. Fear causes people to act irrationally. It causes panic and when someone panics they don’t make sound, informed decisions. Hence the reason people are buying water and toilet paper in bulk when neither is needed any more than normal for this virus.
Fear and panic are why you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. People will trample each other to get out of a confined space even if they don’t smell smoke or see fire. Panic and fear spreads like wildfire. If one person has it they can quickly instill it in someone else and so on and so forth.
Final Thoughts
I know this is kind of a stream of consciousness ramble but I wanted to get it out there. I don’t know how we squash the fear that is growing but it will be worse than the lasting effects of the actual virus. At least in my opinion that will be the case.
I think the fear of the coronavirus could lead to an economic downturn that lasts a while. It looks likely that the tourism industry gets pummeled over the next several months. Hopefully companies big and small are able to pull through it and come out on the other side intact. I have a feeling that won’t be the case though.
A crisis always brings fear and that fear brings panic and it often ends up being worse than the crisis itself. That seems to be the way the coronavirus is going. Hopefully we can turn the rudder on this ship and avoid what seems to be on the horizon. Only time will tell.
Share your thoughts on the situation below.
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24,000 dead by June? – ok – so let’s revisit in June and see if your math pans out (hopefully not). Meanwhile a visit to Walmart last night found a row of empty shelves in VA – asked what was supposed to be on those and the reply was “toilet paper”.
I think everyone should always be prepared ( i.e. have some extra toilet paper and water on hand). Stores are having to limit what people are buying because of the fear some people are showing. I agree the fear behavior is usually worse than what they are fearing.
I traveled to and from Miami last week for leisure. I felt safe the whole time. I did something I have never done before and wiped down my seat area on the plane with disinfectant wipes. But never did I feel like I shouldn’t be traveling by air. I did notice that in all the airports there were no lines at TSA. The planes I flew were mostly full but not 100% like they usually are. I agree Mark the long term impact on some of the business (especially travel) will be devastating. Unfortunately I think it is just beginning and not going over in the next month or two.
Yup I do think this ends up going on for a while unfortunately.
Agreed 100% it’s a basic essential “service” because in the US we are very fortunate and take our services for granted when compared to other parts of the world that would laugh hear how would o survive without running water or electricity. In the event of disasters, emergency, crisis etc services even a basic service could and are shut down ALL of the time. I’m not trying to raise panic but do realize water and electric things we take for granted are all purely a basic service, not a need.
There’s no way that I’d get on a cruise ship anytime in the immediate future. I’m not overly worried about getting sick, but if even just one person on the ship comes down with the virus, the entire ship is going to quarantined for 2 weeks minimum.
Yeah that would be my biggest worry and is for all travel. Being quarantined away from home.
What frightens me are the friends of Donnie who are claiming that the whole thing is nonsense, not as bad as flu.
I had a “conversation” with someone who claimed that the mortality rate is “only” 6%. Which a)is three times the current assumed rate and b)if it were true, is a horrendously high rate.
It is serious. It probably doesn’t require stocking up on bottled water. But be careful, that’s all.
It is serious for sure and unfortunately I think quite a few people will die. I do think the panic is above where the reality is which is the case for many of these types of things.
16,000 have died of the flu in the US this year according to the CDC and a significant number of children compared to 4500 for the virus worldwide. It is destined to become another virus just like H1N1 a few years ago. What we need is to hear from qualified medical experts – not politicians. Now Israel has (I hope not) opened the floodgates to more possible panic by not letting anyone (citizen or otherwise) enter the country unless they can prove to the border security that they will be able to self quarantine for 14 days. I’ve gone to Walmart twice in the past five days and am unable to get a four pound box of baking soda that I regularly use. Nothing on the shelves along with other cleaning supplies and toilet paper. Its like a winter storm warning and all the bread and milk is gone.
Just do the math. The transmission rate for COVID-19 is 2.2. That means every person in the US that has it will give it to 2.2 people. By June there will be more than a million people with it. If the death rate is 2.4%(conservative) then 24,000 people will die. We won’t have a vaccine for at least a year. This on top of the flu virus. The upside is China’s pollution has been drastically reduced.
I haven’t really seen folks stocking up on TP, maybe that’s a regional thing. The bottled water may have to do with confusion about how the virus is transmitted or it could be fear about loss of power. There has been too little real information and too much speculation for folks to make informed decisions here.
Tourist destinations have gone through crises such as this before. In the short term it hurts. As long as the locale responds quickly and efficiently, folks who might travel there will be reassured. If they flub it, as some have, travellers may reconsider visiting in the future.
Perhaps it is time to put away the idea that human beings act rationally!
It is regionally for sure. Like Costco’s in LA sold out of water, TP and paper towel. People in some areas are buying up all the Clorox wipes etc. I think as it spreads or an area starts to get more cases people start clearing out the shelves.
I know my Costco had a sign limiting everyone to 5 of those things.
People buy water not because of the belief tap is contaminated but the fear of when the city shuts down. Just as it has already in China, Italy, Korea, and US which has started shut basic shut down of schools etc. Once a city completely shut down non-essential people will stop working (shopping & service jobs) or they will work from home. Worse case utility companies could also shut down which would cause a power and water outage. Unless you have a well and do not dependent on City water bottled would be last resort. Of course that’s the extreme case and hopefully it does not reach that leave but at the same time many rather be safe then sorry.
I think that is really putting the cart before the horse. Italy has instilled a quarantine and people are still allowed to go to the store, heck even pubs. I don’t see the water system or power system being affected in the US over a virus. Unless every single person gets too sick to work there, water and power will continue.
Another issue is people buying masks that either don’t really work or they are using them improperly and taking them away from the medical professionals that actually need them. Both of these scenarios are being caused by panic and fear and not rational thinking. At least that is my take on it.
So Wuhan, Seoul, and Seattle don’t have potable water or electricity? Utilities are pretty much the most basic need for any city after air and food. Do you have any reliable source to back this up that utilities have been cut off in these cities or is this more of a zombie apocalypse theory?
I never said those places don’t i said at the worse case, yes it very well can be shut down. I worked on Disaster recovery/Emergency relief for 30 years. I been through thousand of disasters and millions of scenarios. You may not know it but it takes actual people to run the utilities companies if they are not on site these service would shut down. Again ill say at worse case this could but very unlikely to happen. Worse case as in the millions of people dying scenario (right now were barley scratching thousands, not even close) or localized temp shut downs could happen as utility plant workers being infected wiping out all of the skilled labor. As you can see with Italy there are many many stages and layers of shut down which has rippling effects, at “very extreme” cases (we are nowhere near that level yet) yes very much utility even emergency service could all be shut down, but sorry no actual zombies in the scenario. A likely layer to be aware of is the looting layer. As the first layer with school shut downs started in the USA. Dual working families may have to provide self child care taking pay cuts, if the city/country shuts down as with Italy you may have dual loss of income which survival kicks in when income is lost. Many with low morals and high survival will resort to stealing and looting from neighbor and shut down stores etc. You will even have many sick running around purposes trying to infect others as they feel they lost hope. It keeps escalating from there again with very most unlikely extreme affecting utility and emergency services.
And when you say “basic” need actually your referring to a luxury that most take for granted. Running water and electric is by far a basic need. Water, yes is a basic need not running don’t get those confused. Not everyone in this world is privileged to have that luxury. Some by life of poor and others as here in USA by choice people choose to live off the grid on solar, have wells and or contentment systems. So think again hard what the word basic means when it comes to life and death and personal survival. Im not trying to scare or say it’s likely but interesting to see what the fortunate consider to be basic needs.
I’ve been on both sides on this one. When I was a kid staying with my grandfather in Haiti we were rich because we had our own well. In the US, power and running water are basic and essential services.