Hmm, This Covid Thing Seems Bad
Markets are crashing this morning because, uh, the Covid-19 coronavirus is getting awfully close to a pandemic.
Should you worry? No, and yes.
No, because it only has a 1-3% fatality rate, and if you're young and healthy, you stand a decent chance of survival.
Yes, because of two reasons: it's looking increasingly like it's impossible to quarantine (thus the "pandemic" term - it's out there) due to its ability to spread before any symptoms are known, and 2% of billions of people is still a heck of a lot of people. As a comparison, the most serious flu pandemic in history (the H1N1 Spanish Flu virus) infected 1/3 of the world's population, and had a 2-3% fatality rate. So... we may be in the same league. And that's worrisome.