INTO THE
UNKNOWN Last December, folks in China began coming down with a brand new virus, one that apparently jumped from pangolins (look them up) to humans via bats in one of that country’s famous “wet markets”. Or it was grown in a Chinese bio-weapons facility. Or it started in their Xinjiang prison camps for the Uyghur Muslims. This new coronavirus, COVID-19, is either no worse than previous coronaviruses, SARS and MERS, or it’s much worse. It’s either no more deadly, or it’s much more deadly. It either incubates for one week or for three, and it might be transmitted via fecal matter … or it might not. In other words, COVID-19 is, for the moment, an unknown, and it is this status as an unknown that could make it a problem for the economy. Human beings do not deal well with unknowns. Most indications point to COVID-19 being no worse than other similar viruses that have spread in the past 20 years. Most healthy people that have contracted it have recovered. The likeliest outcome from COVID-19 for the U.S. economy is a dampening of activity in the middle part of 2020. It should not change our economic fundamentals, but it could impact the economy in a number of ways.
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// FEBRUARY 2020 //
