World Health Organization

The U.S. Government Is Preparing For An 18 Month Pandemic And “Critical Shortages”

Are you prepared for the nationwide shutdown that is happening now to last for the next 18 months? You may not believe that such a thing will happen, but the federal government apparently does. A 100 page government plan marked “For Official Use Only // Not For Public Distribution or Release” was obtained by the New York Times, and it paints a very bleak picture of what is coming. If the projections in this document are anywhere close to accurate, large numbers of Americans will die, the U.S. economy will completely implode, and we will see widespread civil unrest. So let us pray that the assessments in this government plan turn out to be dead wrong.

According to the document, this coronavirus pandemic “will last 18 months or longer”…

A federal government plan to combat the coronavirus warned policymakers last week that a pandemic “will last 18 months or longer” and could include “multiple waves,” resulting in widespread shortages that would strain consumers and the nation’s health care system.

The 100-page plan, dated Friday, the same day President Trump declared a national emergency, laid out a grim prognosis for the spread of the virus and outlined a response that would activate agencies across the government and potentially employ special presidential powers to mobilize the private sector.

I can’t even imagine what our country would look like if current conditions stretched into the middle of 2021.

As a nation, I don’t believe that we would be able to handle it.

The document also envisions that there will be “critical shortages”…

“Shortages of products may occur, impacting health care, emergency services, and other elements of critical infrastructure,” the plan warned. “This includes potentially critical shortages of diagnostics, medical supplies (including PPE and pharmaceuticals), and staffing in some locations.” P.P.E. refers to personal protective equipment.

Of course there are already shortages of some drugs and of many basic consumer products such as toilet paper.

Sadly, things could soon get much worse.

Meanwhile, the overall economy continues to collapse at a staggering pace. A former economic adviser to President Trump is now warning us that the U.S. economy could lose up to a million jobs this month alone…

Kevin Hassett, who served as a top economic adviser to President Trump until last summer, said Monday that the United States economy could shed as many as one million jobs in March alone because of layoffs and hiring freezes related to the coronavirus.

“If you have normal job disruption, and hiring just stops,” Mr. Hassett said, “you’ll have the worst jobs number ever.”

But if this pandemic continues to escalate, a million jobs lost will just be a drop in the bucket.

In fact, the National Restaurant Association is now projecting that their industry will lose “between five and seven million jobs”…

The National Restaurant Association is predicting the unprecedented carnage is only just beginning, on Wednesday writing a letter to the White House and Congress detailing an estimated $225 billion in sales will be wiped out over the next three months, crucially prompting the loss of between five and seven million jobs.

Remember, that is just one industry.

The retail industry is also being completely devastated as well, and we just learned that the largest operator of shopping malls in the United States is shutting them all down…

Simon Property Group, the largest owner of shopping malls in the nation, is closing all of its malls and retail properties because of the coronavirus outbreak.

The closings start at 7 p.m. local time Wednesday and the malls are expected to end March 29, the Indianapolis-based company said in a news release.

Of course they won’t actually open back up on March 29th if this pandemic continues to get worse.

So far, COVID-19 has killed less than 200 Americans.

If our society is being this disrupted now, what will things be like if the death toll becomes 1,000 times larger?

For years, I have warned that our economy was extremely vulnerable, and now that is becoming exceedingly obvious to everyone. It certainly didn’t take too much of a push to burst all the bubbles and send everyone into a severe panic, and now the economy is collapsing at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.

According to NBC News, state unemployment websites all over the nation are crashing because so many people are suddenly applying for unemployment benefits…

Workers who have suddenly found themselves without a paycheck because of the growing coronavirus pandemic in the United States are now dealing with another frustration — state unemployment websites crashing because of high traffic.

From Oregon to New York and Washington, D.C., officials and Twitter users have highlighted the problem after the mass closing of restaurants, retail stores and other businesses as part of the effort to slow the spread of the virus.

Tomorrow morning most Americans will wake up assuming that their jobs are safe. But right now an increasing number of people are being let go without any advance warning whatsoever. Here is one example…

Eileen Hanley was wrapping up her weekend and getting ready for the week ahead on Sunday evening when an email popped up in her inbox with the subject line “COVID-19 uncertainty.” It was from her boss at the small Manhattan law firm where she worked part time as a receptionist.

“We hope you are feeling well during this time,” the email began. Then it cut to the chase: The firm was losing revenue because of the outbreak, and it would have to eliminate “a number of positions,” including hers, “effective immediately.”

We have never seen anything like this before.

Things were tough during World War II, but it was actually a time when the country geared up and worked extremely hard to defeat the enemy.

But now economic activity all over America is being brought to a screeching halt. In fact, we just learned that the three largest automakers have shut down all of their U.S. factories…

Detroit’s Big Three automakers plan to temporarily close all U.S. factories as the coronavirus sweeps across the country.

The companies bowed to pressure from union leaders and employees who called for protection from the pandemic that’s spread to more than 212,000 people in nearly every country across the globe.

As a nation, we would survive a 30 day shutdown.

But if life doesn’t get back to normal for “18 months”, we are going to witness a societal meltdown of epic proportions.

This week, investor Bill Ackman told CNBC that “hell is coming”, and he warned that unless the entire country is shut down simultaneously for an extended period of time “America will end as we know it”…

“What’s scaring the American people and corporate America now is the gradual rollout,” Ackman told Scott Wapner on “Halftime Report” on Wednesday. “We need to shut it down now. … This is the only answer.”

“America will end as we know it. I’m sorry to say so, unless we take this option,” he said. Ackman added that if Trump saves the country from the coronavirus, he will get reelected in November.

I believe that he makes an excellent point, but I would take it one step further.

If the entire world shut down for 30 days, this pandemic would quickly be brought under control. If only the U.S. shuts down, it is inevitable that the virus would keep coming back into the country as the pandemic continues raging elsewhere on the globe.

Of course we aren’t going to get the entire globe to agree to shut down simultaneously for 30 days.

So this outbreak will continue to spread and the case numbers will continue to grow.

For a long time I have been warning that something would come along that would burst all the bubbles and trigger a horrifying economic meltdown.

Now it is upon us, but now is not a time for fear.

With God’s help, we will get through this.

But life is not going to go back to the way it was before.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

What Is Our Country Going To Look Like If Millions Of Americans Start Dying From The Coronavirus?

Experts are warning that hundreds of millions of people around the globe could eventually catch COVID-19, and if that actually happens, millions of people are going to die. Globally, less than 10,000 people have died during this pandemic so far, and the level of fear we are witnessing is off the charts. The entire western world is shutting down and people are freaking out like we have never been before. So what is going to happen if the global death toll soon gets 100 times higher? According to the CDC, in a “worst-case scenario” more than 200 million people could become infected in the United States alone…

According to The New York Times, a closed-door meeting was held last month among CDC officials and dozens of epidemic experts from around the world.

One of the CDC’s leading epidemiologists presented four scenarios – named A, B, C and D – to show possible ways the virus could spread throughout the US population.

The federal health agency projects that in the worst-case scenario, between 160 million and 214 million people would be sickened.

Do you think that our society is equipped to handle a crisis of that magnitude?

I certainly don’t.

Hopefully the measures that are now being taken will slow the spread of this virus. Because if that does not happen, researchers at Imperial College London are projecting that 2.2 million Americans could die…

The report is also influencing planning by the Trump administration. Deborah Birx, who serves as the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cited the British analysis at a news conference Monday, saying her response team was especially focused on the report’s conclusion that an entire household should self-quarantine for 14 days if one of its members is stricken by the virus.

The Imperial College London group reported that if nothing was done by governments and individuals and the pandemic remained uncontrolled, 510,000 would die in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States over the course of the outbreak.

I really don’t understand why some people out there still refuse to take this pandemic seriously.

Now that this outbreak is completely out of control, it won’t be too long before COVID-19 is virtually everywhere.

According to a new study that was just conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, this virus can remain “in the air for hours” and it can remain on surfaces for days…

The highly contagious novel coronavirus that has exploded into a global pandemic can remain viable and infectious in droplets in the air for hours and on surfaces up to days, according to a new study that should offer guidance to help people avoid contracting the respiratory illness called COVID-19.

So once this virus has spread to every community in the United States, there won’t be any public places that are safe.

It could be on the next surface that you touch, the next hand that you shake or in the next gulp of air that you breathe in.

According to the researchers, COVID-19 could still actually be detected on plastic and steel surfaces “after three days”…

On plastic and stainless steel, viable virus could be detected after three days. On cardboard, the virus was not viable after 24 hours. On copper, it took 4 hours for the virus to become inactivated.

In terms of half-life, the research team found that it takes about 66 minutes for half the virus particles to lose function if they are in an aerosol droplet.

That means that after another hour and six minutes, three quarters of the virus particles will be essentially inactivated but 25% will still be viable.

Some people that get this virus only experience minor symptoms the entire time, and that is definitely good news.

But many others have been hit extremely hard. Some survivors experienced “blinding pain” for weeks, and many felt like they were constantly being suffocated.

And even if you survive after going through all that, there is a good chance that your lungs could be permanently damaged for the rest of your life. In fact, one Belgian doctor says that the lung damage that he has been witnessing is “nothing short of terrifying”…

A Belgian doctor working to battle the coronavirus says he’s treated several seriously ill young patients — and their lung scans were “nothing short of terrifying,” according to reports.

Dr. Ignace Demeyer, who works at a hospital in Aalst, said an increasing number of people between the ages of 30 and 50 have presented with severe symptoms, despite having “blank medical records” that show no underlying conditions that would make them high-risk, the Brussels Times reported.

So please stay at home as much as possible in the coming days.

You do not want this virus.

Just like other countries, it appears that our medical system will soon be overwhelmed. Already, hospitals across America are setting up tents and bringing doctors out of retirement in order to get ready for the expected surge in patients.

But if this virus starts spreading as wildly as it has in Italy, it won’t be nearly enough. Just check out what is currently taking place in one northern Italian city…

Funeral services are overwhelmed in Bergamo, the northern Italian city hit hardest by the coronavirus outbreak, with a crematorium operating 24 hours a day, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

There is now a waiting list for burials there, and coffins of the deceased awaiting services have overflowed two hospital morgues and a cemetery morgue, The Post reported.

Many would like to believe that the same thing won’t happen here, but the truth is that the United States is on the exact same trajectory as Italy.

We have maintained a pace that is approximately 10 days behind what is happening over there, and we had better hope that the measures that are being implemented now will alter this trend.

Back on March 5th, Mike Adams of Natural News released a model that projected that this virus will cause more than 2 million deaths in the U.S. by July 4th.

Instead of being too pessimistic, so far the actual numbers are exceeding the projections of his model by as much as 25 percent…

Remember the original pandemic projection model we released on March 5th? That model, with details shown below, projected 2.1 million deaths in the United States by July 4th if aggressive steps weren’t taken to achieve strong social isolation (i.e. halting all domestic air travel, blocking public transport, etc.).

Fortunately for us all, President Trump and local mayors and governors have all taken various forms of action since that day, helping achieve some measure of social isolation. That means the original projection of 2.1 millions deaths is now obsolete, and that President Trump, through his actions, has probably saved many hundreds of thousands of lives.

However, we’re not out of the woods yet. And the number of fatalities being reported right now across America is actually exceeding my original projections by as much as 25%.

Personally, I think that we will see a complete and total national lockdown before the death toll gets to 100,000.

And a complete and total national lockdown would definitely change the trajectory of these numbers.

But for a moment, let’s consider what would happen if the model that Mike Adams released on March 5th continues to be accurate…

By April 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

8,645 actively infected and transmitting on this day
580 cumulative dead since day one, with 58 deaths on this day
5,432 cumulative recovered since day one

By May 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

122,529 actively infected and transmitting on this day
10,432 cumulative dead since day one, with 910 deaths on this day
85,332 cumulative recovered since day one

By June 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

1.7 million actively infected and transmitting on this day
153,000 cumulative dead since day one, with 12,960 deaths on this day
1.2 million cumulative recovered since day one

By July 4th, 2020, if no travel restrictions are put in place:

24.3 million actively infected and transmitting on this day
2.16 million cumulative dead since day one, with 183,000 deaths on this day
17.1 million cumulative recovered since day one

I don’t know if I have the words to describe the extreme fear and chaos that we would see if this many Americans really did end up dying in the months ahead.

We are talking about the potential for a societal collapse of epic proportions.

So let us pray for mercy, because right now we desperately need it.

The Coronavirus Collapse Is Here: Get Ready For The U.S. Unemployment Rate To Hit 20 Percent (Or Higher)

As communities all over America shut down in order to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus, job losses are already starting to rise to extremely alarming levels. As you will see below, almost one out of every five households in the U.S. has already experienced “a layoff or a reduction in work hours” because of this pandemic. Unfortunately, many experts are now anticipating that we could see one of the most dramatic spikes in the unemployment rate in American history in the months ahead. In fact, it is being reported that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin just told members of Congress that this crisis could actually push our unemployment rate up to 20 percent…

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned Republican senators Tuesday that the coronavirus pandemic could drive up US unemployment to 20%, a Republican Senate source told CNN.

Mnuchin’s comments came as he urged Republican senators to act on economic stimulus measures totaling $1 trillion designed to avert that kind of worst case scenario.

If this coronavirus pandemic is over by the end of this calendar year, I think that Mnuchin’s projection may be accurate.

But if if this pandemic stretches into 2021 or beyond, the U.S. unemployment rate will likely go quite a bit higher.

If you doubt this, just look at what has already happened…

The coronavirus pandemic has already started to hit American pocketbooks, with nearly 1 in 5 households experiencing a layoff or a reduction in work hours, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

As people stay home, avoid crowds and cancel plans to avoid spreading the disease, it’s rapidly causing a contraction in economic activity that is hurting a wide range of businesses.

To be more precise, the survey found that 18 percent of U.S. households have lost income already because of this pandemic.

But we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis. If employment is being hit this hard now, what is going to happen if millions of Americans eventually catch this virus?

And it could happen. As I have discussed previously, the attending physician of the U.S. Congress believes that up to 150 million Americans will ultimately become infected.

Sadly, lower income Americans have been hit the hardest by this crisis so far…

Lower-income workers were the most affected: A quarter of households making less than $50,000 had experienced cut hours or a job loss.

Most lower income Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are just barely scraping by each month.

So if this pandemic doesn’t end relatively soon, it won’t be very long before millions of them are really, really hurting financially.

Needless to say, we are about to see a colossal spike in the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits. In fact, so many New Yorkers have been trying to apply that it actually crashed the website…

A drastic move by Gov. Cuomo to close all of the state’s restaurants, bars, movie theaters, gyms and casinos by 8 p.m. Monday to contain the outbreak had suddenly jobless workers flooding the Department of Labor with applications for unemployment benefits.

So many people tried to apply that the website crashed several times throughout the day — while the DOL’s hotline was so jammed up that callers seeking aid could not get through to someone who could handle their claim.

And according to U.S. Senator Rob Portman, the number of people in Ohio filing for benefits jumped 592 percent in just one week…

Senator Rob Portman, and Ohio Republican, said on Tuesday that he received new data on Ohio’s unemployment claims showing 45,000 claims this week compared to 6,500 last week, according to journalist Liz Skalka.

That’s a one-week increase of 592 percent.

Please let that number sink in for a moment.

592 percent.

We are going to see things that we have never seen before in the weeks and months to come, and the economic suffering is going to be off the charts.

At this point, even Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are acknowledging that a recession has probably already begun, and one economist is now projecting that U.S. GDP will decline at a 10 percent annualized rate during the second quarter…

We are only just beginning to see what the economic fallout from coronavirus will be.

And Wall Street economists are now throwing out some brutal forecasts for what economic data in the quarters ahead might hold.

“We now guesstimate that second quarter GDP will drop at a 10% annualized rate, after a 2% fall in Q1,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, in a note to clients on Monday night.

In a desperate attempt to prop up the economy, the Trump administration is proposing a stimulus package that will be somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars.

The following is how CNBC summarized what may be in that package…

$500 billion to $550 billion in direct payments or tax cuts
$200 billion to $300 billion in small business assistance
$50 billion to $100 billion in airline and industry relief

If Congress ultimately approves this package, apparently quite a bit of the money will be used to make direct payments to U.S. households.

According to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, the American people “need cash now”…

Potentially $250 billion of the package could go toward making direct payments to Americans, a White House official told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Mnuchin said earlier Tuesday that the administration wants to get emergency funds in Americans’ pockets “immediately.”

“Americans need cash now,” Mnuchin said during a White House press briefing on the administration’s latest efforts to combat the disease. “I mean now in the next two weeks.”

Of course this would set an extremely dangerous precedent, and the federal government can’t afford this because it is already drowning in debt, and “helicopter money” is likely to cause significant inflation, but very few policy makers in Washington seem to be alarmed by such concerns.

If the federal government is going to do this during the very early chapters of this crisis, they better keep on doing it month after month, because the suffering is going to greatly escalate the longer this pandemic lasts. If we get to the point where the payments are eventually cut off, it is likely that we will see a really big national temper tantrum.

And instead of sending out $1,000 to each adult, why not send out $10,000? Better yet, why not make it $100,000?

I don’t know anyone that couldn’t use an extra $100,000 right now.

Needless to say, once we start going down this road it is just a matter of time before our money is completely and utterly worthless.

Our national economic nightmare has begun, and it is going to be absolutely horrifying. I really like how Peter Schiff recently made this point…

This is the beginning of the end. This is how it starts. And believe me, when you see how this finishes, this is going to be unlike anything we have experienced. I think we have passed that point of no return. It’s like we’ve already jumped off the top of the building, off the top of the Empire State Building. There’s no way to change our minds now. We’re going to hit that pavement. I can’t see any way we can avoid that. All we can do is brace for impact ourselves.”

For so long, so many of us have been warning that “the everything bubble” would burst and that the consequences would be extremely severe.

It turns out that fear of the coronavirus is the “black swan event” that finally burst that bubble, and now everything that we have been warning about is starting to unfold.

The coronavirus collapse is here, and the days ahead are going to be exceedingly challenging. We are about to experience the consequences of decades of exceedingly foolish decisions, and those consequences are going to shake our society to the core.

“Do Not Call 9-1-1 Just Because You Ran Out Of Toilet Paper”

Did you ever imagine that you would see the day when police are being called out to protect trucks that are unloading shipments of toilet paper? Well, in California this is actually happening. At the Costco in Santa Maria, California police were seen guarding a truck as it unloaded a shipment of toilet paper on Saturday. Thanks to the tremendous fear that the coronavirus pandemic is creating, toilet paper has become one of the hottest commodities in America all of a sudden. Many retailers have already started to limit the amount of toilet paper that each customer can purchase, and shortages are becoming increasingly common.

So what should you do if you run out of toilet paper and can’t get anymore?

Well, apparently some people in Oregon have been calling 9-1-1 to voice their concerns. The Newport Oregon Police Department posted the following message on their Facebook page two days ago…

It’s hard to believe that we even have to post this. Do not call 9-1-1 just because you ran out of toilet paper. You will survive without our assistance.

In fact, history offers many other options for you in your time of need if you cannot find a roll of your favorite soft, ultra plush two-ply citrus scented tissue.

Seamen used old rope and anchor lines soaked in salt water. Ancient Romans used a sea sponge on a stick, also soaked in salt water. We are a coastal town. We have an abundance of salt water available. Sea shells were also used.

Mayans used corn cobs. Colonial Americans also used the core of the cob. Farmers not only used corn cobs, but used pages from the Farmers Almanac. Many Americans took advantage of the numerous pages torn from free catalogs such as Sears and Roebuck. The Sears Christmas catalog, four times thicker than the normal catalog, could get a family of three wiped clean from December through Valentine’s Day; or Saint Patrick’s Day if they were frugal.

Then, of course, there are always alternatives to toilet paper. Grocery receipts, newspaper, cloth rags, lace, cotton balls, and that empty toilet paper roll sitting on the holder right now. Plus, there are a variety of leaves you can safely use. Mother Earth News magazine will even tell you how to make your own wipes using fifteen different leaves. When all else fails, you have magazine pages. Start saving those catalogs you get in the mail that you usually toss into the recycle bin. Be resourceful. Be patient. There is a TP shortage. This too shall pass. Just don’t call 9-1-1. We cannot bring you toilet paper.

I am glad that they approached this “crisis” with a sense of humor, but the reality of the matter is that this is starting to become a full-blown national problem.

At this point, even Amazon is having a very difficult time finding enough toilet paper…

Those toilet paper and water shortages at your local markets and big-box retailers have affected Amazon, as well.

The company said over the weekend that it, too, is out of stock on many items, “especially in household staples categories,” and is working “around the clock” and bringing on “additional capacity” to deliver orders.

Ultimately, toilet paper is not essential for survival, and we could do just fine without out.

But what will happen if this pandemic stretches on for many more months and national food supplies start getting really tight?

Let us hope that we don’t get to that point any time soon, because it would spark nationwide panic on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented.

Sadly, most Americans could not last very long on what they currently have stored up in their homes. If we have to go through an extended national lockdown like we have already seen in China or Italy, a lot of the exact same people that mocked us for “preparing” are going to find themselves in a very precarious position.

And in some areas, a lockdown has already occurred. In fact, more than 6 million residents of northern California have now been ordered to “shelter in place”…

Six Bay Area counties announced a “shelter in place” order for all residents on Monday — the strictest measure of its kind yet in the continental United States — directing everyone to stay inside their homes and away from others as much as possible for the next three weeks as public health officials desperately try to curb the rapid spread of coronavirus across the region.

The directive begins at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday and involves San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Contra Costa and Alameda counties — a combined population of more than 6.7 million.

Most Bay Area residents will be just fine for a few days.

But what happens if this “shelter in place” order lasts for several months?

Over on the east coast, New York City has not been locked down yet, but the latest measures are a big step in that direction…

The city that never sleeps has been forced to shut down its bars, restaurants, movie theaters and gyms, including those in New York City’s iconic Times Square, in a bid to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Photos of one of the most famous tourist attractions in the Big Apple show a relatively quiet scene with only a handful of people walking under Times Square’s bright lights on Monday.

The state of New York now has the most confirmed cases in the entire nation, and if this outbreak continues to spread wildly it is just a matter of time before a total lockdown is instituted.

At this point, the United States is on the exact same trajectory as Italy. If this continues, the same things that are happening there will start happening here.

In the northern portion of the country, the death toll is becoming truly frightening. In fact, we just learned that six Catholic priests have died from the virus in the city of Bergamo alone…

At the heart of the European coronavirus crisis in northern Italy’s city of Bergamo, six Catholic priests have died during the past week from the disease and, as of Sunday, over 20 priests were hospitalized.

The Bishop of Bergamo, Francesco Beschi, confirmed this numbers speaking with the Italian TV news network Rainews24.

Anyone that has to deal with the public is going to be at great risk during this pandemic, and so it is vital not to underestimate the deadliness of this virus.

Just a few weeks ago there were zero cases in Bergamo, but now the city’s crematory has so many dead bodies it is unable to keep up…

An Italian mayor says that his city’s crematory is now “unable to dispose of all the work it has to do,” as there have been so many bodies of those who have died due to the coronavirus.

Giorgio Gori — the mayor of Bergamo, Italy — says that it is no longer only the hospitals that are in a state of emergency but also the crematorium responsible for managing the bodies, according to a report by Il Giornale.

Doesn’t that sound eerily similar to what happened in Wuhan?

If we don’t get this outbreak under control somehow, the same thing will eventually happen in the United States too.

But most Americans still seem to believe that this virus is not a serious threat to them personally. In fact, a brand new survey discovered that only 19 percent of Americans expect to catch COVID-19…

The survey of 502 people at least 18 years old shows that fear and panic doesn’t seem to be completely overtaking most households, but plenty of Americans are worried. In all, 19% of respondents think they’ll be diagnosed with coronavirus at some point.

Interestingly, nearly one in ten (9%) people went as far to admit they believe they have coronavirus right now.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs is projecting that half the U.S. population will eventually become infected.

A lot of people that are not taking this seriously will eventually get sick and die.

And this is especially true for those that are openly mocking this pandemic. Right now, “the coronavirus challenge” is getting a lot of attention on social media for all the wrong reasons.

As a part of this challenge, people are literally licking toilet seats and doorknobs…

No matter what’s at stake, please don’t try this challenge, folks.

There’s a brand new challenge introduced on TikTok where people are licking everyday items that are often for public use.

Yes, these include toilet seats and doorknobs.

How unbelievably stupid do you have to be to do something like that?

Unfortunately, this is yet another perfect example of how far our society has degenerated.

We have literally become an “idiocracy”, and we are sitting ducks for a deadly virus that is not going to show us any mercy whatsoever.

For The 3rd Time This Month, We Just Witnessed The Largest Single Day Point Crash In Stock Market History

We are literally witnessing history in the making. For the third time in the last six trading sessions, we have witnessed the largest single day point crash in stock market history. Let that sink in for a moment. On March 9th, the Dow set a new record by falling 2,013 points. Then on March 12th, the Dow set a new record again by falling 2,352 points. Of course what happened on Monday was the biggest whopper of them all. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2,997 points, and words like “carnage” and “devastation” don’t seem to be strong enough to convey that horror that took place. To put all of this into perspective, the largest single day point crash during the last financial crisis was just 777 points. That means that the crash that we witnessed on Monday was nearly four times as large as the worst single day point crash in 2008.

Of course all of this volatility is being driven by fear of the coronavirus. Even though less than 100 Americans have died so far, investors are completely freaking out.

So what will happen if thousands or even millions of us start dying?

On a percentage basis, the nightmare that we watched unfold on Monday was the worst day for stocks since “Black Monday” in 1987…

Stocks fell sharply Monday — with the Dow suffering its worst day since the “Black Monday” market crash in 1987 and its third-worst day ever — even after the Federal Reserve embarked on a massive monetary stimulus campaign to curb slower economic growth amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 2,997.10 points lower, or 12.9%, at 20,188.52. The 30-stock Dow was briefly down more than 3,000 points in the final minutes of trading. The S&P 500 dropped 12% to 2,386.13 — hitting its lowest level since December 2018 — while the Nasdaq Composite closed 12.3% lower at 6,904.59 in its worst day ever.

Overall, the Dow is now down more than 31 percent from the all-time high set earlier this year.

If you can believe it, all of the tremendous stock market gains that we have witnessed over the last three years have been completely wiped out in just 18 trading days.

Ouch.

Banking stocks were hit particularly hard once again on Monday. Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase were each down more than 14 percent, Morgan Stanley was down more than 15 percent, and Citigroup was down more than 19 percent.

Remember, those are not figures for the entire year.

Those are figures for one day.

Of course the utter carnage was not just limited to stocks. The following is how Zero Hedge summarized some of the other losses that we witnessed…

STOXX EUROPE 600 ENDS DOWN 4.9%, LOWEST CLOSE SINCE MID-2013
SOUTH AFRICA’S FTSE/JSE INDEX FALLS AS MUCH AS 12.2%, MOST EVER
MUNI BONDS EXTEND WORST ROUT SINCE 1987
COPPER SLUMPS AS MUCH AS 5.2% AMID WEAKENING RISK APPETITE
BRENT CRUDE OIL PLUNGES BELOW $30 FOR FIRST TIME SINCE 2016
SILVER PLUNGES TO 2011 LOWS
U.S. WHOLESALE GASOLINE PRICES PLUNGE 21%
HYG WORST DROP SINCE 2008
LQD WORST DROP SINCE 2008

The good news is that there is often a hefty rebound after a historic decline of this magnitude. It appears that stock prices will likely shoot back up a good bit on Tuesday, and that will temporarily soothe a lot of frazzled nerves.

But this coronavirus pandemic is not going away any time soon. Over the past couple of days, restaurants and bars have been shut down across the nation, schools have been shuttered for the foreseeable future, and it has been announced that the entire city of San Francisco will be locked down.

As virtually all forms of activity come to a standstill all over America, our economic numbers are going to absolutely collapse.

In fact, on Monday we got a sneak preview of what is coming…

The New York Fed’s Empire State business conditions index plunged a record 34.4 points to -21.5 in March, the regional Fed bank said Monday. Economists had expected a reading of 4.8, according to a survey by Econoday. This is the lowest level since the financial crisis in 2009.

As we plunge into a truly horrifying economic downturn, businesses all over the country are already crying out for bailouts.

We are now being told that many airlines could be bankrupt by May, and a 50 billion dollar aid package for the industry has already been requested…

US airlines slammed by the coronavirus are requesting an aid package from the federal government that could amount to about $50 billion, according to industry group Airlines for America.

The requested aid would be in the form of loans, grants and tax relief. The airlines are looking for up to $25 billion in grants for passenger air carriers and $4 billion in grants to cargo carriers, and the same amounts in loans or loan guarantees, Airlines for America outlined in a briefing document.

Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of ordinary U.S. citizens are already losing their jobs. For example, just check out what is currently transpiring in New York…

New York’s unemployment website was overwhelmed Monday as the coronavirus pandemic put tens of thousands of people across the state out of work.

A drastic move by Gov. Cuomo to close all of the state’s restaurants, bars, movie theaters, gyms and casinos by 8 p.m. Monday to contain the outbreak had suddenly jobless workers flooding the Department of Labor with applications for unemployment benefits.

This will soon be happening all over the nation.

So how many jobs could ultimately be lost if this pandemic stretches on for quite a while?

According to Moody’s Analytics, millions of jobs are potentially at risk…

Nearly 80 million jobs in the US economy are at high or moderate risk today, according to analysis in the last week from Moody’s Analytics. That’s more than half of the 153 million jobs in the economy overall.

That doesn’t mean that all those jobs will be lost. But it’s probable that as many as 10 million of those workers could see some impact to their paychecks — either layoffs, furloughs, fewer hours or wage cuts, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Needless to say, there is going to be enormous pressure for the federal government to “do something”, and U.S. Senator Mitt Romney has “joined a growing chorus of liberal and conservative economists” in calling for $1,000 to be given to every adult in America…

On Monday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) joined a growing chorus of liberal and conservative economists are lining up behind a proposal published in the Wall Street Journal by Harvard professor Jason Furman, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) under President Obama, that calls for direct government payments of $1,000 to every American adult.

Why not make it $10,000?

We could all use some extra cash.

Of course once this sort of thing starts happening, it won’t be too long before a loaf of bread costs ten dollars and a gallon of milk costs 20 dollars.

Flooding the system with money at a time when economic activity is contracting very sharply will inevitably cause very painful inflation.

Unfortunately, at a moment like this short-term considerations are all that policy makers are really concerned about, and the American people will be demanding “relief”.

So we should fully expect lots of free money to be thrown around. In fact, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced on Monday that her city will provide “$5 million in grocery vouchers to help families impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic”.

But I must once again stress the fact that less than 100 Americans have died during this pandemic so far.

If things are getting this crazy already, what is our society going to look like a few months down the road?

According to the New York Times, nearly 7 million Americans could die in a “worst-case scenario”…

So far, the illness – known as COVID-19 – has sickened more than 4,200 people and killed 74.

But as a graphic from The New York Times shows, things could be much bleaker should overall infection rates and fatality rates rise.

In the worst-case scenario 6.99 million Americans would die from coronavirus – 2.74 million of them being those aged 80 and above.

We are just in the very early chapters of this “perfect storm”, and what we have experienced so far is nothing compared to what is coming.

If we can’t even handle the leading edge of this storm, what are we going to do when it really starts raging?

“Where You Stop Is Where You Stay” – Domestic Travel Restrictions Are Being “Considered”

Is the United States on the verge of a complete and total “lockdown” like we have already seen in China, Italy and elsewhere? As you will see below, the Trump administration has repeatedly brought up the possibility of “domestic travel restrictions”, and that means that this is something that is very seriously being considered. The first step may be simply banning all non-essential domestic air travel, and that would be a major inconvenience for many Americans. But beyond that, there is the possibility that we could see restrictions on all travel between states or even draconian restrictions on going out in public at all like we have already seen in China and Italy. If we get to that point, where you are at that moment is where you will be staying, and I will be sharing more about this below.

But first, let’s review what the Trump administration has been telling the public about the possibility of “domestic travel restrictions”. The following comes from a USA Today article that was posted on Saturday…

President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday said the government is considering domestic travel restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic and added United Kingdom and Ireland to the Europe travel restrictions that went into effect late Friday.

They did not offer specifics on domestic flight restrictions but Trump said earlier in the week that they would be considered if “an area gets a little bit out of control” in terms of coronavirus cases.

I think that the phrase “is considering domestic travel restrictions” is pretty clear, and it should definitely send a chill up your spine.

Then on Sunday, a member of the administration said that officials are weighing “an outright halt to domestic air travel”…

The Trump administration is weighing “all options” to curb the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S., including an outright halt to domestic air travel, a senior official said Sunday.

Such a drastic step hasn’t been taken since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and it would raise questions about U.S. airlines’ chances for survival without government support.

This came directly from acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, and he went on to add that “all options remain on the table”…

“We continue to look at all options and all options remain on the table,” said Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in a press briefing when asked about the possibility. He said the administration is following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So would “all options” also include banning all travel in and out of states where this pandemic is the worst?

Apparently so, and this is something that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is actually asking for…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the White House should consider restricting domestic travel from states that are seeing a rapid increase in coronavirus infections, saying the flow of people has made containment difficult.

He made the plea shortly before the state on Saturday announced its fourth death from the disease, a 77-year-old man from Lee County.

Could you imagine getting into your car and driving toward the next state only to be stopped at the border?

It could soon happen.

Hopefully we won’t get to that point, but this outbreak continues to spiral out of control.

And if the numbers just keep going up, it is inevitable that we will see things happen that would have been unthinkable only a few weeks ago.

At this point, even Dr. Anthony Fauci appears to be advocating some sort of a “national lockdown”…

Asked by CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “State of the Union” if he’d like a “national lockdown” where people are being told they need to stay home and out of restaurants and bars, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he’d “like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see” in those places.

“Whatever it takes to do that, that’s what I’d like to see,” Fauci added.

As Americans, we don’t like to have our movements restricted.

And hopefully the Trump administration will choose not to go in that direction, but they have already restricted domestic travel for members of the military…

A memo released Friday evening announced a ban on government-funded domestic travel for military members, Department of Defense civilians and their families, according to Stars and Stripes.

The Pentagon says Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist has approved new travel restrictions on service members and Defense Department civilians assigned to military installations and surrounding areas within the United States and its territories.

And similar restrictions have been put into place for federal workers…

As the coronavirus outbreak continues across the U.S., the White House has told federal agencies and executive departments to suspend all work travel unless it is absolutely necessary.

The White House Office of Management and Budget issued new guidance on Saturday telling federal workers that “only mission-critical travel is recommended at this time.”

With all that in mind, I would like for you to watch this video. According to John Grimm, a Republican candidate for Kootenai County Sheriff, it appears quite likely that we could potentially see some sort of travel restrictions in the near future. And if there is eventually some sort of a total lockdown, he is warning that “where you stop is where you stay”…

So I hope that you are already at the place where you plan to ride out this pandemic.

If not, I would get there as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, we continue to see major institutions shut down all over the country.

On Sunday, we learned that all schools in New York City will be shutting down “until at least April 20”…

In a decision he described as “extraordinarily painful,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that he is closing the city’s public schools on Monday until at least April 20.

The mayor said the city would make every attempt to reopen schools at that point, but that it’s possible schools could remain closed for the rest of the school year.

Also, several states announced on Sunday that all restaurants and bars will be forced to shut down for the foreseeable future. Ohio was one of the first to make such an announcement…

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced that he will be issuing an order to close all restaurants and bars beginning at 9:00 p.m. Sunday night.

“I’m aware that this will impact many, many good workers,” he said in a tweet. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, but we will work to mitigate the suffering. It is our goal to get everyone through this.”

Most restaurants in this country are just barely scraping by financially, and many of those that are now being forced to close down may not ever open back up again.

Illinois is another one of the states that is closing down all restaurants and bars…

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced Sunday afternoon that all restaurants and bars in Illinois will be closed effective at the end of the business day on Monday, continuing through March 30, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I cannot let the gravity of the choices prevent us from taking the actions that the science and the experts say will keep people safe,” Pritzker said.

In areas of the country where this outbreak is already wildly out of control, the restaurants and bars might as well be closed down anyway. Restaurant traffic in New York City and Seattle is down more than 60 percent, and the more this virus spreads the more people are going to be afraid to go out into public to do anything.

Just a few weeks ago our lives seemed so normal, but now our entire country is steadily shutting down from coast to coast.

And life is not going to return to normal any time soon, because the CDC just issued guidelines calling for the cancellation or the postponement of “any events with 50 or more attendees for the next eight weeks”…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging people across the U.S. to cancel or postpone any events with 50 or more attendees for the next eight weeks, the agency said in revised guidance issued Sunday.

The CDC said individuals and organizations should reschedule large events and that gatherings of any size should be reconsidered unless organizers can protect vulnerable populations, ensure proper hand hygiene and social distancing.

In other words, everything that is being shut down right now is going to remain shut down for at least eight weeks.

I cannot even begin to describe how damaging that is going to be to our economy.

And what happens if this pandemic is still raging after eight weeks have passed?

The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for three entire years. There is no way that authorities could keep us all locked down for that long.

This pandemic is rapidly becoming a national nightmare, and it appears that our freedoms are about to be restricted in ways that most of us never thought possible.

America is on the verge of being locked down, and for many of us it truly will feel like we have been put in prison.

Did The Federal Reserve Just Purposely Try To Crash The Stock Market?

Unless the Federal Reserve is purposely attempting to spread panic on Wall Street, the decisions that the Fed just made don’t make any sense at all. Back on March 3rd, the Federal Reserve announced an unscheduled emergency interest rate cut for the very first time since 2008. Wall Street immediately interpreted that as a “panic move” and the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the session down 785 points. So Fed officials had to know what was going to happen once they announced an even bigger unscheduled emergency interest rate cut on Sunday. Predictably, stock futures hit “limit down” very rapidly, and now investors are bracing for a week of tremendous carnage.

But this didn’t have to happen. Yes, we witnessed three of the worst trading days in U.S. stock market history last week, but on Friday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1,985 points. It was an absolutely epic rally, and if the Fed had not caused so much panic there may have been a good chance that the rally could have continued into next week.

In other words, U.S. stocks just had one of their best days ever, and there didn’t appear to be a need for any “emergency intervention” by the Fed.

If the Federal Reserve had just waited a couple of days until their normally monthly meeting, and if the Fed had just cut rates a quarter point, that would have likely been greeted by the markets with warm enthusiasm.

But instead, Fed officials decided to load up their bazooka and go for broke on Sunday. In addition to using up all of their “interest rate ammunition” in one epic volley, the Fed also officially restarted quantitative easing…

The Federal Reserve, saying “the coronavirus outbreak has harmed communities and disrupted economic activity in many countries, including the United States,” cut interest rates to essentially zero on Sunday and launched a massive $700 billion quantitative easing program to shelter the economy from the effects of the virus.

The new fed funds rate, used as a benchmark both for short-term lending for financial institutions and as a peg to many consume rates, will now be targeted at 0%-0.25% down from a target range of 1% to 1.25%.

These moves have “panic” written all over them, and investors immediately responded accordingly…

Stock market futures hit “limit down” levels of 5% lower, a move made by the CME futures exchange to reduce panic in markets. No prices can trade below that threshold, only at higher prices than that down 5% limit.

Dow Jones Industrial average futures were off by more than 1,000 points, triggering the limit down level. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were also at their downside limits.

As I mentioned above, Fed officials saw what happened immediately after their March 3rd emergency rate cut, and so this sort of response by the markets should have been foreseeable.

As Wolf Richter has noted, these latest moves by the Fed were “the opposite of being confidence inspiring”…

The whole Sunday afternoon maneuver, on top of the mega shock-and-awe maneuvers Thursday and Friday reek of sheer and outright panic – and they’re the opposite of being confidence inspiring. That stock futures plunged after the Fed had effectively put its biggest tools to work shows how obvious this panic is.

So then why did the Fed pull the trigger if this was going to be the result?

It would seem that there are two obvious conclusions. Either Fed officials are completely and utterly incompetent, or they were purposely trying to crash the stock market.

And now that the Federal Reserve is completely out of interest rate ammunition to fight any future economic downturn, the only weapon they have left is “helicopter money”.

As economic activity comes to a grinding standstill due to fear of the coronavirus, it appears to be inevitable that we will see tremendous inflation as the Fed floods the system with money.

In other words, there is going to be a whole lot more money chasing a lot fewer goods and services in the months to come.

Meanwhile, we are already starting to see a run on U.S. banks. On Thursday, so many people were taking money out of a Bank of America branch in midtown Manhattan that it actually ran out of cash…

As the stock market was having its worst day in 30 years on Thursday, customers at a Bank of America branch in Midtown Manhattan, the financial heart of New York, were lining up to take cash out of their accounts — sometimes tens of thousands of dollars at a time.

So many people sought huge sums that the bank branch, at 52nd Street and Park Avenue, temporarily ran out of $100 bills to fulfill large withdrawals, according to three people familiar with the branch’s operations. The shortage hit after a rash of requests for as much as $50,000, said two people who witnessed the rush.

And according to Zero Hedge, wealthy individuals in the Hamptons are doing the same thing…

As the ultra rich Snake Plisken out of the soon-to-be quarantined Manhattan – where at least one bank has are already run out of $100 bills – to fortify themselves against the viral zombie peasant hordes in their impregnable castles in the Hamptons, one thing they’re looking to hoard is cash, which has caused some substantial pressure on financial institutions in the area, according to Bloomberg. At least one New Yorker had his $30,000 cash withdrawal request denied at a Chase bank after being told the limit was $10,000. Meanwhile, bank employees said they were waiting on a “shipment of cash” to fulfill other requests that have been made exceeding the $10,000 amount.

Other branches in the area were unable to help in fulfilling the request, with the East Hampton branch reportedly telling the Southampton branch that it had “two massive withdrawal orders” of its own that it was trying to deal with.

Hopefully we won’t see similar scenes all over the country in the weeks ahead.

But without a doubt, panic continues to spread all over the globe. The following examples come from CNN…

A woman at an Australian supermarket allegedly pulls a knife on a man in a confrontation over toilet paper. A Singaporean student of Chinese ethnicity is beaten up on the streets of London and left with a fractured face. Protesters on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion welcome cruise passengers by hurling abuse and rocks at them.

The coronavirus risks bringing out the worst in humanity.

Yes, this virus is definitely bringing out the worst in humanity.

Here in the United States, two “panic shoppers” became so enraged with one another that they began hitting each other with broken wine bottles…

A brawl erupted in a Georgia Sam’s Club packed with shoppers during which two feuding men slashed each other with broken wine bottles.

A second incident in a Costco in Brooklyn saw an employee pleading with two women to calm down after a screaming match began when carts collided in the mobbed store.

This is why it was so important to get prepared in advance.

For years I have been mocked for telling my readers to “get prepared”, but now those that did are going to be very thankful for the things that they have stored up.

If you are not prepared, you can go brave the giant crowds storming the stores if you wish, but at this point the big stores are going to be one of the very best places in the entire country to catch the virus.

I don’t know about you, but I am not eager to experience the “blinding pain” that survivors of COVID-19 have told us about. So I would highly recommend avoiding big stores and other major public gathering places as much as possible.

We need to accept that life has changed for the foreseeable future. According to Newt Gingrich, it is time for us to adopt a wartime mindset…

We should be planning for a worst-case pandemic and using the kind of intensity of implementation which served us so well in World War II. Getting enough ventilators, masks, intensive care units, treatment medications and aggressive community-wide testing are the minimum steps to saving lives and stopping the pandemic.

The Pence-led Coronavirus Task Force has begun to pull things together, but it should have a planning group that creates a worst-case projection and then devises the steps necessary to smother the pandemic and minimize its impact.

And this is also a time for prayer. In fact, President Trump designated Sunday as a “National Day of Prayer”…

President Donald Trump on Saturday declared Sunday, March 15, a “National Day of Prayer for All Americans Affected by the Coronavirus Pandemic and for our National Response Efforts.”

“I urge Americans of all faiths and religious traditions and backgrounds to offer prayers for all those affected, including people who have suffered harm or lost loved ones,” Trump said in his statement announcing the day of prayer.

Let us all hope that this pandemic passes as quickly as possible.

But the CDC just issued new guidelines that recommend that gatherings of 50 people or more not be held for the next eight weeks.

Of course most decision makers in this country will follow those guidelines, and so that means that our lives will not be getting back to normal for at least the next two months.

And it could be a whole lot longer than that.

Medical Expert: “There Are Probably 25 To 50 People Who Have The Virus For Every One Person Who Is Confirmed”

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to explode all over the globe, and authorities are warning that it is going to continue to get worse. The number of confirmed cases outside of China roughly tripled once again this week, and if this outbreak continues to escalate at this pace there will be more than a million confirmed cases in less than a month. But as bad as the official numbers are, the truth is that there are a whole lot more people walking around out there that have caught the virus but have not been tested. In fact, a medical professor at Johns Hopkins University named Marty Makary believes that there are “probably 25 to 50 people who have the virus for every one person who is confirmed”…

“Don’t believe the numbers when you see, even on our Johns Hopkins website, that 1,600 Americans have the virus,” he said. “No, that means 1,600 got the test, tested positive. There are probably 25 to 50 people who have the virus for every one person who is confirmed.”

He added: “I think we have between 50,000 and half a million cases right now walking around in the United States.”

If he is correct, and considering how easily this virus spreads from person to person, it isn’t going to be too long before this virus is everywhere.

Other health experts are also warning that the number of Americans that have become infected is already extremely high. As I pointed out yesterday, Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton is convinced that the number of victims in her state is now above 100,000…

Ohio health officials announced Thursday that the state has five known cases of the coronavirus, but one expert said that the number is likely much higher and estimated 100,000 undiagnosed cases.

Dr. Amy Acton, the director of the state’s health department, told reporters that the virus is “among us, but we can’t see it yet,” WBRB reported.

But of course what we have seen so far could just be the tip of the iceberg.

According to the New York Times, the CDC is projecting that up to 214 million Americans could eventually become infected…

Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to one projection. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.

Can you imagine how overwhelmed our healthcare system will be if that actually happens?

According to an analysis that was just conducted by USA Today, we could soon see 17 seriously ill coronavirus patients competing for each open hospital bed…

A USA TODAY analysis shows that if the nation sees a major spike, there could be almost six seriously ill patients for every existing hospital bed.

That analysis, based on data from the American Hospital Association, U.S. Census, CDC and World Health Organization, is conservative. For example, it assumes all 790,000 beds will be empty.

Since two thirds are not, the reality could be far worse: about 17 people competing for each open bed.

And we still have no idea how long this pandemic will last.

Many officials are hoping that it will be over in a matter of months, but what if lasts for three full years like the Spanish Flu pandemic did?

At this point, the entire western world is literally in the process of shutting down as fear of the coronavirus spreads like wildfire. Many people are going to be deathly afraid to go out in public for the foreseeable future because this virus is so easy to catch.

It could be on the next surface that you touch, it could be on the next hand that you shake, and there is even the possibility that you could breathe it in during the next breath that you take.

Considering how many people our national leaders interact with on a daily basis, they are particularly vulnerable. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife has already tested positive for the virus, and Trudeau himself has gone into voluntary self-quarantine.

Here in the United States, President Trump says that he will “most likely” get tested soon after being exposed to someone that had the virus. The following comes from ABC News…

He also said he “most likely” will get tested himself, although he said he had no symptoms. “I think I will be,” he said. “Fairly soon, we’re working on that, we’re working out a schedule,” he responded to a reporter’s question, saying not because of any exposure he might have had, “but because I think I will do it anyway.” He had been photographed last weekend standing next to a Brazilian official who tested positive.

In addition, we just learned that Ivanka Trump is staying home for now after meeting with an Australian official that has tested positive…

Ivanka Trump self-isolated at home on Friday, not going into the White House, after she was photographed with Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton days before he tested positive for coronavirus.

The White House said Dutton was ‘asymptomatic’ during his interaction with the first daughter and Ivanka Trump, who serves as an adviser to President Donald Trump, is showing no symptoms, doesn’t need to self-quarantine and stayed home out of an abundance of caution.

Things are really starting to get crazy out there.

When COVID-19 originally starting sweeping across China, most Americans weren’t really too concerned about it, but now a brand new survey has found that about two-thirds of all Americans are worried about catching the virus…

Two-thirds of Americans are concerned that they or someone they know will be infected with the novel coronavirus, but in a country with a growing partisan divide, political tribalism is having a large impact when it comes to anxiety over the disease, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Friday.

Although unease over the coronavirus is high, it also strongly breaks along partisan lines. Among Democrats, 83% are concerned about getting coronavirus, including 47% who are very concerned, and among Republicans, 56% are concerned, including only 15% who are very concerned. Only 17% of Democrats are not concerned while a larger 44% of Republicans are not concerned.

Now that President Trump has officially declared a state of national emergency, hopefully that partisan divide will start to diminish.

This virus should not be treated like a political issue. This is the biggest public health crisis of our time, and we all need to be taking it very seriously.

Of course some Americans are responding to this pandemic by completely “freaking out”…

A panic-buying fever swept through the Big Apple Thursday, as mobs of freaked-out New Yorkers frantically scoured store shelves for any remaining supplies amid spreading coronavirus fears.

“We’re freaking out about it,” Monica Gang, 27, said as she braved the crowds at Trader Joe’s in Manhattan. “We came in here looking for rice, and there is no rice left. Rice crumbs are the only thing left. We don’t even know what to stock up on.”

But so far there are only about 2,000 confirmed cases in the U.S. and less than 100 people have died.

If this virus is causing this much fear now, what will our society look like if thousands (or even millions) of people start dying?

Let us continue to hope that this pandemic will eventually start to subside, but so far it has just continued to escalate week after week.

If something is not done to dramatically slow this virus down in the United States, soon the level of fear will be absolutely unprecedented.

The Number Of Coronavirus Cases In The United States Is Likely Far Higher Than We Are Being Told

Do more than 100,000 people in the state of Ohio already have the coronavirus? As you will see below, that is what the top health official in the state believes. It has become exceedingly clear that COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire all across the country, but because of the very limited testing that is taking place the official count of confirmed U.S. cases is still very low. Even though South Korea has managed to test more than 140,000 of their citizens, the U.S. has still only been able to test about 10,000 people, and that is making our numbers appear far better than they should. At this moment, there are still less than 2,000 confirmed cases in the United States, but that number will undoubtedly go much higher once testing starts ramping up.

For many of us, it is deeply frustrating not to have an accurate picture of what is really going on out there.

We don’t really know how widespread this pandemic has become in this nation, but some brave health officials are giving us their best guesses.

For example, Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton told reporters that she believes that more than 100,000 people have the coronavirus in her state…

Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton said at a press conference alongside Gov. Mike DeWine (R) that given that the virus is spreading in the community in Ohio, she estimates at least 1 percent of the population in the state has the virus.

“We know now, just the fact of community spread, says that at least 1 percent, at the very least, 1 percent of our population is carrying this virus in Ohio today,” Acton said. “We have 11.7 million people. So the math is over 100,000. So that just gives you a sense of how this virus spreads and is spreading quickly.”

If that number is anywhere close to accurate, that could mean that this virus has already spread to millions of Americans.

So let us hope that she is wrong.

But for now we don’t really know how badly this crisis has escalated because the CDC has not been testing enough people. In fact, one top CDC official just admitted that the CDC only tested 77 people from Sunday to Wednesday morning…

“This is not a problem we can test our way out of,” said Stephen Redd, MD, head of the CDC’s Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, in testimony on Wednesday. It was an admission that, in a nation of 320 million, testing every person will be impossible.

Redd also revealed in his testimony that the total number of people tested for the coronavirus by the CDC was 1,784. That means that, as of Wednesday morning, the CDC had tested only 77 people for the coronavirus since Sunday. According to a CDC spokesman, the number that had been tested as of Sunday was 1,707.

On average, the CDC has been doing less than 100 tests a day since this outbreak started.

Aren’t they supposed to be the very best at what they do?

What in the world is taking them so long?

State labs have been doing marginally better. According to Yahoo News, so far they have tested 7,617 people…

So far, however, only 7,617 people have been tested in state laboratories, according to the COVID Tracking Project, a database that updates the test statistics from states and the federal government. (Some of those statistics don’t include negative tests, which means the number tested could be higher.)

But even if you add the state labs and the CDC together, we are still testing far, far fewer people that other big countries around the world.

This is the biggest public health crisis of any of our lifetimes, and they have completely dropped the ball.

According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, we should be able to do a lot better than this…

Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the testing logjam constitutes a “failing” of the nation’s healthcare system.

When compared with other countries that have rigorous programs, Fauci said, “We’re not set up for that. Do I think we should be? Yes. But we’re not.”

Meanwhile, top experts continue to issue extremely ominous warnings. For instance, the attending physician of the U.S. Congress has told lawmakers that up to 150 million Americans could eventually catch this virus…

Congress’ in-house doctor told Capitol Hill staffers at a close-door meeting this week that he expects 70-150 million people in the U.S. — roughly a third of the country — to contract the coronavirus, two sources briefed on the meeting tell Axios.

Could you imagine what our country would look like if that actually happened?

Now that the virus is spreading so widely, any person that you interact with could potentially pass it to you.

At this point, there is even concern that President Donald Trump may have been exposed…

Fabio Wajngarten, the press secretary for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday, two sources have told CNN. Bolsonaro’s health is being monitored.

It comes just days after Wajngarten met US President Donald Trump in Florida.

Trump was in close physical proximity with the Wajngarten Saturday night, two people familiar tell CNN.

Let us pray that Trump will be just fine.

But this just shows how vulnerable we are as a nation. Nobody is truly safe, and the number of people carrying the virus is just going to keep rising with each passing day.

Up to this point, many people out there have been attempting to downplay this pandemic, and on Thursday Vice-President Pence publicly denounced the “irresponsible rhetoric” coming from those individuals…

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that there has been “irresponsible rhetoric” from people who have downplayed the seriousness of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

The death toll in Italy just crossed 1,000 for the very first time, and their healthcare system has been completely overwhelmed by coronavirus victims.

We are on the exact same trajectory as Italy, and anyone that is not taking this outbreak seriously is being very foolish. In one of his most recent articles, Mike Adams did a great job of making this point…

The global death rate for concluded cases has now reached 6%, with 94% surviving. This rate of 6% is triple what most pundits have been claiming (2%), and it’s 60 times higher than the death rate of the seasonal flu (0.1%).

Yet there are still people running around saying, “this is no worse than the flu.”

Those people are, frankly, kinda stupid. Try to keep your distance from them, as they are quite likely to get infected (and maybe even die) since they will take no precautions to protect themselves (and will probably put others at risk with their own actions, too).

It is not wrong to hope that this pandemic will soon fade.

But sticking your head in the sand and pretending that it isn’t there isn’t going to do anyone any good.

We need to deal with reality, and reality is telling us that a deadly virus is sweeping across the globe at a staggering pace.

So let us pray for mercy, and let us also prepare for the very long battle that awaits us in the weeks and months ahead.

Get Ready For Your Lifestyle To Change Indefinitely Because Of This Coronavirus Pandemic

Fear of the coronavirus is causing shutdowns on a global scale like we have never seen before. Just about every major sporting event that you can think of has been either canceled or postponed, schools and universities are keeping students away, global tourism is absolutely collapsing, churches are being shuttered, conferences and festivals are being taken off the calendar, businesses are asking workers to work from home, and even Disneyland is being closed down. Over the past several days the wave of closings and cancellations has become an avalanche, and all of our lifestyles are going to be dramatically altered for the foreseeable future.

For the first few days, a lot of people are actually going to enjoy this “free vacation”. After all, what kid doesn’t enjoy time off from school, and there are lots of Americans that relish the opportunity to work from home.

But as the weeks drag on and the economy grinds to a standstill, this “free vacation” will start evolving into a horror show.

The more this coronavirus spreads, the more restrictions we will see on human interaction throughout the western world, and that has very serious implications.

Yes, there is much that we can do through the Internet today, but most economic activity still requires at least some actual human interaction. So when authorities restrict human interaction they are actually choking off trade.

I can’t think of too many other things that could trigger an economic collapse faster than a global pandemic could. We had better pray that life will get back to normal in a few weeks, because a complete and utter economic nightmare is ahead if that does not happen.

Unfortunately, life is not likely to get back to normal any time soon. The number of confirmed cases continues to grow at an exponential rate, and those that are getting infected now will be able to infect others for weeks to come…

Researchers looking at cases in China say patients could spread the virus for up to 37 days after they start showing symptoms, according to the study published in the British medical journal The Lancet.

On average, survivors still had the virus in their respiratory system for about 20 days and could presumably continue to spread the disease, researchers found.

So how long will it be before this pandemic is finally over?

Will it be months?

Could it be years?

Don’t forget, the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920.

I think that Wall Street is starting to grasp the reality of what we are potentially facing. On Thursday, we witnessed the largest single day stock market point crash in American history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2,352 points, and that shattered the “old record” of 2,013 points that was just set on Monday. Overall, the Dow was down 9.99 percent, and that was the biggest percentage decline since the nightmarish stock market crash of 1987.

Incredibly, European stocks did even worse on Thursday. In fact, it was the worst day ever for stock markets in Europe.

We have never seen a time when the entire western world has been in the process of literally shutting down simultaneously. The following is how a Slate article described what we are currently witnessing…

Virtually every activity that entails or facilitates in-person human interaction seems to be in the midst of a total meltdown as the coronavirus outbreak erases Americans’ desire to travel. The NBA, NHL, and MLB have suspended their seasons. Austin’s South by Southwest canceled this year’s festival and laid off a third of its staff. Amtrak says bookings are down 50 percent and cancelations are up 300 percent; its CEO is asking workers to take unpaid time off. Hotels in San Francisco are experiencing vacancy rates between 70 and 80 percent. Broadway goes dark on Thursday night. The CEOs of Southwest and JetBlue have both compared the impact of COVID-19 on air travel to 9/11. (That was before President Trump banned air travel from Europe on Wednesday night.) Universities, now emptying their campuses, have never tried online learning on this scale. White-collar companies like Amazon, Apple, and the New York Times (and Slate!) are asking employees to work from home for the foreseeable future.

On top of everything else, March Madness has been canceled for the first time ever…

The NCAA will not crown a men’s or women’s basketball champion in 2020.

Conceding defeat to the COVID-19 virus and a cascade of uncertainty about how bad its ongoing spread might impact public health across the United States, the NCAA announced Thursday all its winter and spring championships have been canceled after a series of moves across multiple sports leagues that foreshadowed the eventual arrival at this decision.

I can’t even imagine the heartbreak that many of those athletes are feeling right now.

They have been training all of their lives to fight for a championship, and now that opportunity has been taken away.

Sadly, just about every major sporting event has either been canceled or will be canceled shortly.

Of course the business world has been thrown into chaos as well. Companies all across America are going to great lengths to minimize human interaction, and all sorts of non-essential activities are being eliminated.

Even a New York seminar entitled “Doing Business Under Coronavirus” has been canceled because of the coronavirus.

In the days ahead, the list of public gatherings that are still happening will probably be much shorter than the list of public gatherings that have been canceled.

All of this is being done to save lives.

But in the process, it is going to absolutely kill the economy.

At this point, President Trump is even thinking about imposing “travel restrictions within the United States”…

REPORTER: Are you considering travel restrictions within the United States, such as to Washington State or California? [Emphasis added]

TRUMP: We haven’t discussed that yet. Is it a possibility? Yes. If somebody gets a little bit out of control, if an area gets too hot. You see what they’re doing in New Rochelle, which is — which is good, frankly. It’s the right thing. But then it’s not enforced, it’s not very strong but people know that they’re being watched … New Rochelle, that’s a hotspot.

Can you imagine the giant temper tantrum that we would see if that actually happened?

Earlier today, the top headline on CNN was “America’s way of life changes indefinitely”, and for once they got it exactly right.

As long as this virus is spreading out of control, decision makers all over the western world are going to be afraid to resume normal activities.

Just think about it. If you are a decision maker and you resume normal operations too quickly, someone could get sick and die. Not only could that cost you your job, but it could also get you sued into oblivion.

In our overly litigious society, the threat of lawsuits is going to play a major factor in this crisis. In fact, I am sure that some people are already in contact with their lawyers.

Hopefully the measures that are being taken will help to reduce the spread of this virus. But as one of my good friends has pointed out, even if the U.S. was totally locked down for 30 days, this virus would just keep coming back into the U.S. from other countries that are not locked down.

So the truth is that we would need the entire globe to be completely locked down for an extended period of time to really defeat this pandemic, and that simply is not going to happen.

Many among the elite can see what is happening, and they are taking off in their private jets to their “holiday homes or specially prepared disaster bunkers”…

Like hundreds of thousands of people across the world, the super-rich are preparing to self-isolate in the face of an escalation in the coronavirus crisis. But their plans extend far beyond stocking up on hand sanitiser and TV boxsets.

The world’s richest people are chartering private jets to set off for holiday homes or specially prepared disaster bunkers in countries that, so far, appear to have avoided the worst of the Covid-19 outbreak.

Of course most of us do not have that option.

Most of us are going to have to ride this thing out right where we are, and that reality is causing a lot of people to completely panic. Just check out what is happening in New York…

Panicked New Yorkers rushed to stock up on essentials forming long lines and clearing shelves of produce as Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency in the city due the coronavirus outbreak.

He made the decision on Thursday afternoon saying the last 24 hours had been ‘very, very sobering’ and that the world had been turned ‘upside down’ in just a day.

The announcement immediately sparked furious panic shopping from New Yorkers as grocery stores across the city saw chaos and frantic stockpiling with residents fearing the worst.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

As things go from bad to worse, we are likely to see fear and panic on a scale that is absolutely unprecedented.

But as I discussed yesterday, now is not a time for fear.

During any major crisis, cool heads and calm hearts are needed. The days ahead are going to be full of challenges, and by God’s grace we shall do our very best to meet those challenges.

We Just Witnessed The Largest Single Day Stock Market Point Crash In History (Again)

It has happened again. On Thursday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,352 points, which was the largest single day stock market point crash in history. Of course the old record only lasted for three days, because on Monday the Dow dropped 2,013 points. And on Wednesday, we actually witnessed the third largest single day stock market point crash in history. So the three worst days in the history of the U.S. stock market (on a point basis) have all happened this week. On a percentage basis, the stunning decline that we witnessed on Thursday was the worst day for the Dow since the horrifying market crash of 1987. Wall Street is in a tremendous state of panic right now, and nobody is quite sure when this will end.

Needless to say, this frenzy of selling is being driven by fear of the coronavirus…

“The coronavirus is scary and people don’t know what to expect,” said Kathy Entwistle, senior vice president of wealth management at UBS. “It’s like the tsunami is coming. We know it’s going to hit any day and nobody knows what the outcome is going to be.”

In the last 48 hours, the NBA, the NHL, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer have all suspended their seasons because of COVID-19. Public gatherings of all sorts are being canceled or postponed all across America, and we are seeing “panic buying” at major retailers like Costco that is absolutely unprecedented.

But we still don’t know if this is going to evolve into a major pandemic that is going to kill millions of people. Right now there are less than 1,400 confirmed cases in the U.S. and less than 100 deaths.

If we are witnessing this much panic now, what will happen if millions of people do actually start dying?

Stocks should not be falling this rapidly yet, but of course they should have never gotten so high in the first place.

And even after all the carnage that we have already witnessed, stocks are still extremely overvalued.

In order for stock valuation ratios to return to their long-term averages, we would need to see the market fall another 20 to 30 percent.

But if this coronavirus pandemic does eventually become what many are fearing, stock prices will eventually go way below their long-term averages.

These are very strange times, and I have a feeling that they are about to get a whole lot stranger.

The Entire Western World Is Starting To Shut Down As Authorities Brace For “Millions” Of Coronavirus Cases

Since the end of World War II, have we ever seen the entire globe gripped by so much fear? This week, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. and Europe has absolutely exploded, and authorities all over the western world are rushing to shut down public gatherings of all kinds. The NCAA has banned fans from upcoming tournament games, the NBA just suspended the entire season because a Utah Jazz player tested positive, and dozens of other sporting events have been canceled all over the planet. In both the U.S. and Europe, schools are being shut down for weeks, some universities are telling their students not to come back for the rest of the semester, and a whole host of concerts, conferences, festivals and religious gatherings are either being postponed or canceled altogether. We have never seen anything like this before, and the implications are staggering.

Keeping everyone at home for a few weeks is one thing.

But what is going to happen if this pandemic just keeps growing for the rest of this calendar year or even longer?

According to NBC News, the attending physician of Congress believes that “70 million to 150 million people in the United States will become infected”…

Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, said he expects 70 million to 150 million people in the United States will become infected with COVID-19, NBC News reported Wednesday, citing two sources.

Monahan made the comments to Senate staff during a closed-door meeting Tuesday afternoon, according to NBC News.

Right now, there are less than 2,000 confirmed cases in this country and fear is off the charts.

Can you imagine the societal meltdown that will ensue if 70 million Americans get infected?

Dr. Anthony Fauci is also warning that we we should expect to see “more cases” and that things will continue to “get worse”…

“I can say we will see more cases and things will get worse than they are right now,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday at a hearing on the nation’s preparedness for the outbreak.

Unfortunately, these sorts of warnings don’t hit home for many Americans until someone that they personally love is affected.

But now that Tom Hanks and his wife have both tested positive, a lot of people that previously did not take this outbreak seriously are now officially freaking out.

Tom Hanks is one of the most greatly loved actors in America, and this is going to be the moment when a lot of Americans finally wake up and realize that this virus is definitely not “like the flu”.

Over in Europe, things are actually quite a bit worse than they are in the United States right now. Just like Italy, Denmark has just locked down the entire country, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to warn that 70 percent of the German population could eventually become infected…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that up to 70% of the country’s population – some 58 million people – could contract the coronavirus.

Mrs Merkel made the stark prediction at a news conference on Wednesday alongside Health Minister Jens Spahn.

But it may take a couple of years to get to that number.

So what are we going to do? Are we actually going to shut down the entire western world for the foreseeable future?

If you go look at the map that Johns Hopkins has put up, the numbers coming out of Europe right now are like something out of a science fiction movie.

And as I discussed yesterday, the U.S. is on the exact same trajectory.

This is definitely a virus that you want to avoid if at all possible. In many instances it causes devastating damage to the lungs, and even if you survive your lungs may not ever fully recover.

One of the very first confirmed British cases said that the virus hit him “like a train” and had him “in blinding pain for weeks”.

Has the flu ever left you “in blinding pain for weeks”?

Of course not.

And he was one of the fortunate ones that survived. For those that die, the suffering can be far worse.

I truly don’t understand why there are still people out there that are attempting to downplay this pandemic. This is a truly insidious virus, and numerous experts are warning that it could eventually kill millions.

As I wrap up this article, I would like to share with you an excerpt from a firsthand account from an American that is right in the middle of the nightmare that is currently unfolding in Italy. I think that you will find what Christina Higgins posted on her Facebook page to be quite sobering…

When Prime Minister Conte announced last night that the entire country, 60 million people, would go on lock down, the line that struck me most was “there is no more time.” Because to be clear, this national lock down, is a hail mary. What he means is that if the numbers of contagion do not start to go down, the system, Italy, will collapse.

Why? Today the ICUs in Lombardy are at capacity – more than capacity. They have begun to put ICU units in the hallways. If the numbers do not go down, the growth rate of contagion tells us that there will be thousands of people who in a matter of a week? two weeks? who will need care. What will happen when there are 100, or a 1000 people who need the hospital and only a few ICU places left?

On Monday a doctor wrote in the paper that they have begun to have to decide who lives and who dies when the patients show up in the emergency room, like what is done in war. This will only get worse.

There are a finite number of drs, nurses, medical staff and they are getting the virus. They have also been working non-stop, non-stop for days and days. What happens when the drs, nurses and medical staff are simply not able to care for the patients, when they are not there?

And finally for those who say that this is just something that happens to old people, starting yesterday the hospitals are reporting that younger and younger patients – 40, 45, 18, are coming in for treatment.

You have a chance to make a difference and stop the spread in your country. Push for the entire office to work at home today, cancel birthday parties, and other gatherings, stay home as much as you can. If you have a fever, any fever, stay home. Push for school closures, now. Anything you can do to stop the spread, because it is spreading in your communities – there is a two week incubation period – and if you do these things now you can buy your medical system time.

And for those who say it is not possible to close the schools, and do all these other things, locking down Italy was beyond anyone’s imagination a week ago.

Soon you will not have a choice, so do what you can now.

Please share.

No matter how many reassuring press conferences our leaders hold, and no matter what moves global central banks make, most people are going to want to avoid places where they could become infected as long as this virus keeps spreading.

If our normal lives are interrupted for a few weeks, it ultimately won’t be that big of a deal.

But if this crisis just keeps going month after month, it will quickly bring us to the brink of societal collapse.

Let us pray for a miracle, because we definitely need one right now.

Fear Of The Coronavirus Is Causing A Stock Market Apocalypse

In all of U.S. history, we have never seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average go from an all-time high to a bear market as quickly as we just did. As I keep reminding my readers, the stock market is all about how investors view the future. Early this year, extremely irrational optimism about the future pushed stock prices to the most overvalued levels that we have ever seen, but now things have completely changed. Fear of the coronavirus has many investors fearing an imminent economic crisis, and we have seen volatility on Wall Street that is absolutely insane. On Monday we witnessed the largest single day point decline in the history of the Dow, on Tuesday stocks came roaring back, and then on Wednesday we witnessed the second largest single day point decline in the history of the Dow. As I have previously explained numerous times, we see huge waves of momentum during any stock market crash, and I am sure we will see many more as this current implosion continues to play out.

On Wednesday, the Dow closed at 23553.22, which represented a 20.3 percent decline from the peak on February 12th.

The bull market that began on March 9th, 2009 has finally ended, and U.S. stocks are off to their worst start for a year since the last financial crisis.

But less than 5,000 people around the globe have died from this virus so far.

If we are seeing this much fear now, what is going to happen if millions of people start dying?

Thankfully, the World Health Organization finally decided to officially label this outbreak a “pandemic” on Wednesday…

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic as the global death toll rose above 4,500 and the number of confirmed cases neared 125,000.

“We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear,” Tedros said at a news conference. “We cannot say this loudly enough, or clearly enough, or often enough: All countries can still change the course of this pandemic.”

Of course that announcement really rattled investors and the Dow ended up falling 1,464 points. Banking stocks were hit particularly hard.

But then later in the day we learned that President Trump would be addressing the nation at 9 PM eastern time, and investors were temporarily encouraged.

Unfortunately, investors didn’t seem to like what Trump had to say, and Dow futures immediately plummeted about 1,000 points afterwards.

On top of everything else, two major stories broke late Wednesday that shocked the entire nation. We learned that Tom Hanks and his wife have tested positive for the coronavirus, and the entire NBA season was suspended because a Utah Jazz player now has the virus.

Needless to say, every horrifying headline is just going to cause even more chaos for the markets.

At this point, one Goldman Sachs analyst is projecting that the S&P 500 will likely fall quite a bit more in the days ahead…

Goldman Sachs chief equity analyst David Kostin said Wednesday he expects the S&P 500 to hit a low of 2,450, more than 10% below its current closing level of 2,741. Kostin based his new view on a reduced expectation for S&P 500 earnings.

And another analyst believes that we are “only about halfway” to the bottom of the market…

“We can see the panic in the equity market,” said Jerry Braakman, chief investment officer of First American Trust. “The big question for most people is, are we at the bottom yet? I think we’re only about halfway there.”

Of course both of them are assuming that this coronavirus pandemic will not last for too much longer.

But what if they are wrong?

What if this pandemic lasts into next year or even longer?

As stocks fall, people are gobbling up gold and silver coins like crazy. In fact, millions of Silver Eagles have been sold in recent days…

With the spread of the Global Contagion, the demand for physical precious metals has increased significantly. According to the U.S. Mint’s newest update, another million Silver Eagles were sold over the past two days. This brings to total Silver Eagle sales in March at 2.3 million, more than three times the previous month.

So if you have been waiting all this time for your silver coins to start appreciating in value, it may finally start paying off.

Meanwhile, we are already starting to see workers being laid off as much of the U.S. literally begins to shut down because of this virus. The following comes from the Washington Post…

At the Port of Los Angeles, 145 drivers have been laid off and others have been sent home without pay as massive ships from China stopped arriving and work dried up. At travel agencies in Atlanta and Los Angeles, several workers lost their jobs as bookings evaporated. Christie Lites, a stage-lighting company in Orlando, laid off more than 100 of its 500 workers nationwide this past week and likely will lay off 150 more, according to chief executive Huntly Christie. Meanwhile a hotel in Seattle is closing an entire department, a former employee said, and as many as 50 people lost their jobs after the South by Southwest festival in Austin got canceled.

Sadly, this is just the beginning. If this crisis lasts long enough, eventually we will see layoffs that are absolutely unprecedented.

And the civil unrest that I keep warning about appears to be already starting as well. Just check out what just happened at the University of Dayton…

University of Dayton students took to the streets after the school canceled classes, on-campus events, and gatherings, and closed UD student housing. Over 1,000 students gathered on Lowes Street by late Tuesday, jumping on cars and throwing bottles at police the University of Dayton said in a written statement.

You can see a news report about this incident right here. Of course if this pandemic continues to escalate the civil unrest will become much, much, much worse in the months ahead.

On Wednesday night, President Trump announced that travel from Europe would be suspended for 30 days.

That is certainly a step in the right direction, but at this point it isn’t going to make too much of a difference.

The virus is now in over 100 countries, and it is now spreading in almost every U.S. state.

And what most people don’t realize is that this pandemic is far from the only crisis we will be facing. We have entered a time when we will be hit by one thing after another, and most Americans will not be able to handle it.

We are seeing so much fear out there right now, but this is not a time for fear.

This is a time for faith, and it is absolutely critical for you and your family to believe that you can get through this.

Anyone can shine during the best of times, but it is during the worst of times that we discover who we really are.

The days ahead are going to be extremely challenging, but they will also be a great opportunity to make a tremendous difference in a society that has been gripped by fear and that is starting to spin completely out of control.

U.S. Coronavirus Cases Double In Less Than 48 Hours, And “Everyone Else Will Be Italy In 9-14 Days Time”

What is our country going to look like if COVID-19 keeps spreading this rapidly? The map that Johns Hopkins University is using to track the spread of this virus has become extremely popular, and I refer to it several times a day. On Monday, I watched as the number of confirmed cases in the United States crossed the 500 mark, and then on Tuesday I was really shocked to see it jump up to 1,025. In less than 48 hours, the number of confirmed cases more than doubled. Needless to say, we are going to be in a whole lot of trouble if this keeps happening. Of course the U.S. is far from alone. This outbreak has gotten completely out of control all over the western world, and right now Europe is being hit harder than anyone else.

After analyzing the growth rates that we are currently seeing all over Europe, computer scientist Mark Handley declared that “everyone else will be Italy in 9-14 days time”…

On Monday night, computer scientist Mark Handley, Professor of Networked Systems and part-time Roboticist at UCL in London, tweeted a graph showing how growth figures in other infected countries compare to Italy’s.

‘Everyone else will be Italy in 9-14 days time,’ Handley tweeted along with the data.

At this moment, the entire nation of Italy has been locked down. If Handley is correct, we should expect to see this happen in a bunch of other countries before two more weeks are gone.

Of course Handley is not the only one making these sorts of projections. Dr. John Crane of the University of Buffalo says that the U.S. is “on the exact same trajectory” as Italy…

He told DailyMail.com in an interview that the world had never seen anything like the outbreak and that the US seemed to be watching how Italy responded before making any drastic decisions of its own.

‘It looks like they’re on the exact same trajectory. Italy had an 11.5 day head start,’ he said, referring to the data.

We definitely do not want what is happening in Italy to happen here.

There are now more than 10,000 confirmed cases in Italy, the death toll is up to 631, and their healthcare system is being absolutely overwhelmed…

Italian hospitals are so ‘overwhelmed’ by coronavirus that strokes are going untreated and elderly patients are not even being assessed, a doctor at the centre of the crisis has said – while another medic said people in the UK and US should be panicking more.

Doctors in Italy have been forced into life-or-death decisions over who should receive intensive care, with virus cases piling up around the country.

The same thing could soon start happening in the United States.

When there are too many people to treat, not everyone will be treated.

This is yet another reason why you want to stay away from public places so that you do not get this virus.

Here in the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci is urging an “all hands on deck” approach to fighting this virus…

Top national disease expert Anthony Fauci is urging the nation to take an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to the coronavirus – and urging officials to plan for immediate measures even in states that haven’t had cases show up yet.

‘It doesn’t matter if you’re in a state that has no cases or one case,’ Fauci said at a press briefing with Vice President Mike Pence Tuesday. ‘You have to start taking seriously what you can do now that if and when the infections will come – and they will come – sorry to say, sad to say, they will,’ he told reporters.

Like so many others, Fauci seems resigned to the fact that we are going to see a lot more cases in this country.

But where will we put them? We only have a limited number of hospital beds, and those will fill up pretty quickly.

According to Washington Governor Jay Inslee, there could be 64,000 cases in his state alone by May…

Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus are swiftly ballooning across the United States, and President Trump’s former Homeland Security Adviser Thomas Bossert says time is running out to control the spread.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is overseeing one of the country’s largest clusters, said “if you do the math” there could be 64,000 cases of COVID-19 in the Evergreen State by May, while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the positive cases in the city are “coming in so intensely now” that public officials are struggling to keep up with them. He said he wasn’t in a position to give the media a “detailed case breakdown” because of the rapidly changing number.

Speaking of New York, a state of martial law has essentially been instituted in New Rochelle in a desperate attempt to contain the cluster that has erupted there…

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the most rigorous actions to date to combat the spread in New Rochelle, which he described as the “most significant cluster in the country” and accounts for the lion’s share of the surging caseload in the tri-state area.

Those measures include deploying National Guard troops to a Health Department command post and setting up a satellite testing facility and one-mile, two-week containment area in the city. Public schools in that containment zone will be closed through March 25; National Guard troops will help clean surfaces and deliver food in that one-mile radius.

Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before similar measures are put into place in communities all across the nation.

The months ahead are going to be extremely challenging for all of us, and so let us hope that this outbreak begins to subside as soon as possible.

We are already starting to see things happen that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago. If you can believe it, colleges and universities all over America are choosing to cancel classes for the foreseeable future…

A growing number of U.S. colleges have canceled in-person classes because of the coronavirus. The closures began in Washington state, and now include Harvard University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Rice University, Stanford University, Hofstra University, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington, among others. As of midday Tuesday, more than half a million students are affected by the cancellations.

And you know that things must be really bad if Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are canceling campaign rallies…

Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns canceled rallies set for Cleveland on Tuesday night due to coronavirus concerns, the first disruptions the outbreak has caused in the 2020 Democratic primary.

In separate announcements, the Democratic presidential contenders’ campaigns said they exercised caution about holding large public gatherings after hearing guidance from public health officials.

At this point, there is even talk that the Tokyo Olympics could be delayed for a year or two.

In the short-term, bringing public activity to a screeching halt all over the western world won’t hurt too much.

But what if this outbreak continues to keep growing month after month?

Right now, it looks like this virus is going to be with us for a long time to come.

In Spain, the number of confirmed cases tripled in just two days, and the number of confirmed cases in France rose 70 percent from Monday to Tuesday.

In the UK, it has been reported that the government is planning “to stockpile body bags”, and the fact that a member of the British Parliament has become a confirmed case made headlines all over the world…

Health minister Nadine Dorries has tested positive for coronavirus and fears for Boris Johnson’s health have been sparked after she attended an event hosted by the Prime Minister at No 10 last week. Ms Dorries is understood to have fallen ill on Thursday and then over the weekend, the “classic symptoms” of the disease emerged.

But everything that I just shared with you pales in comparison to what just happened in Germany.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly told the German Parliament that 60 to 70 percent of the German population will eventually catch the virus…

Angela Merkel says she expects around 60-70 percent of Germans will be infected with the coronavirus, which equates to about 53 million people.

Reportedly, the German Parliament fell completely silent when Merkel stated the number.

News outlet Bild reported the German Chancellor’s comments, which echoed numbers forecast by Berlin virologist Christian Drosten, who added that such a total could take 2 years or longer to reach.

If we eventually see similar numbers throughout the entire western world, the global economy will collapse, there will be great civil unrest all over the globe, and tens of millions of people will die.

Let us continue to hope that such a nightmare scenario can be avoided somehow.

But let us also prepare for an extended battle with this virus, because it certainly appears that COVID-19 is not going to disappear any time soon.

The U.S. Response To This Coronavirus Outbreak Has Been Horrifyingly Bad

What recourse do we have when our public health officials completely and utterly fail us? I don’t know if we could have prevented COVID-19 from spreading widely in the United States even if everything had been done perfectly, but the truth is that we will never know. When this outbreak first started, visitors from the affected areas were allowed to fly into the United States without being properly screened, and as you will see below this is still happening in many instances. And once the virus started spreading on U.S. soil, we needed to immediately test any suspected cases so that we could isolate them as rapidly as possible. But even though South Korea has managed to test more than 140,000 of their citizens, less than 9,000 Americans have been tested so far…

The CDC revealed on Tuesday that 8,554 Americans have been tested for coronavirus, but the agency’s director says state and local health labs are understaffed and ill-equipped to keep up with crisis.

According to figures published on the CDC’s website on Tuesday, 3,698 tests had been done in its lab, and another 4,856 had been done in public health labs.

Can anyone out there explain why we can’t do at least as good as South Korea is doing?

So far, I haven’t found a single person that can explain this to me.

Even after everything that has transpired, victims at the very epicenter of the outbreak in the Seattle area that are “showing symptoms of the respiratory illness” are still not being tested…

The Seattle-area nursing home at the epicenter of one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States said on Monday it had no kits to test 65 employees showing symptoms of the respiratory illness that has killed at least 13 patients at the long-term care center.

The staff in question, representing more than a third of the Life Care Center’s 180 employees, are out sick with symptoms consistent with coronavirus, and a federal strike team of nurses and doctors is helping to care for 53 patients remaining in the center.

Are you kidding me?

This is the biggest public health crisis that any of us have ever seen, and the virus has already killed a bunch of residents at that particular nursing home, but we still don’t have enough kits to get those employees tested?

I don’t know if there are words that are strong enough to describe how badly our health officials have dropped the ball.

Do we have to wait until this crisis is over to fire every decision maker at the CDC and completely rebuild it from scratch?

To say that their performance has been “horrifyingly bad” is actually a tremendous understatement.

Of course the CDC is blaming their problems on a lack of funding…

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Robert Redfield said state and local public health labs are underequipped and understaffed.

“The truth is we’ve not invested, we’ve underinvested in the public health labs,” Redfield said at a House Appropriations hearing for the 2021 CDC budget.

“There’s not enough equipment, there’s not enough people, there’s not enough internal capacity, there’s no surge capacity,” Redfield added.

Actually, the CDC receives more than 6 billion dollars in federal funding every year, and much of that goes into paying their salaries.

There are “168 key employees at CDC who earn more than $200,000” a year, and those very highly paid experts were supposed to make sure that our country was ready for a pandemic like this.

Now we are at a tipping point. The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has more than doubled over the past 48 hours, and an expert that used to work in the White House is telling us that we are “10 days from our hospitals getting creamed”.

10 days.

And thanks to the devastating impact that this outbreak has had on the Chinese economy, there are 30 different drugs that are already in short supply, and that list will grow with each passing week.

At this juncture, it is going to be nearly impossible to get this virus under control in the United States. In an article that he just posted, Mike Adams outlined the steps that would need to be taken if we were really serious about ending this outbreak…

Block all international flights into the USA from all countries
Close all borders and stop cross-border traffic
Shut down all domestic commercial air travel
Order all public schools, universities, government offices and churches to close
Cancel all public events, including concerts, conferences, etc.
Quarantine all US cities, block all highways in and out
Shut down all public transportation, including subways, buses, taxis and rail
Enact nationwide medical martial law and prevent people from leaving their homes or gathering in groups of any kind

Needless to say, the American people are not about to accept such measures, and Mike Adams acknowledges that it would be “a month of hell”…

These efforts might achieve a 90% suppression factor, which would break the cycle of the coronavirus within 3-4 weeks.

In other words, America would have to endure a month of hell to stop the virus in its tracks.

So this virus will just keep spreading, and the number of confirmed cases will just keep on doubling.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned above, many travelers that are coming into the U.S. from countries where this outbreak is completely out of control are still not being properly screened…

U.S. travelers arriving into John F. Kennedy International Airport from locked-down Italy revealed that many passengers are not having their temperatures taken, despite a widespread coronavirus outbreak in the European country.

In exclusive interviews with DailyMail.com on Tuesday afternoon, American travelers arriving back in the country from Rome said Italians remain ‘unfazed’ by the deadly outbreak and ‘are still out having fun’.

Considering the fact that the entire nation of Italy is now locked down, why are we still allowing flights from Italy to land here in the first place?

There are now more than 1,000 confirmed cases in the United States even though we have done such minimal testing.

As testing expands, the number of confirmed cases will rise rapidly, and that will cause the level of fear to dramatically escalate.

Already, Costco stores all over the country are being raided by desperate consumers when they open each day. Just check out what happened at one Costco store in southern California on Monday morning…

Shoppers were pictured lining up outside a Costco store in Burbank, California, on Monday morning, with a queue of people and their empty shopping karts snaking through the parking lot, waiting to rush in and emergency stockpile goods the second the doors opened.

One eager customer, Jeffrey Schaefer, 45, said the line of shoppers continued all along the side of the huge wholesale store building, through the parking lot and back up the sidewalk.

If our health officials had been on top of things from the very beginning, the outlook for the months ahead could have been very different.

But now we are being told that we are past the “containment” phase and that officials will simply try to do their best to “mitigate” the damage that this outbreak will do from this point forward.

This is a complete and utter nightmare, and it looks like we are still only in the very early chapters of it.

The Coronavirus Goes To Washington D.C., And It Is Spreading Fear Like Crazy

New coronavirus cases inside the United States are increasingly being announced late in the evening after the financial markets have closed, and I certainly don’t blame officials for trying to minimize the fear that is spreading across the nation like wildfire. But I have to say that it has been stunning to sit here and watch the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. go from just above 600 to more than 750 in just a couple of hours. Initially, quite a few of our national politicians attempted to make light of this crisis, but now that confirmed cases are popping up in Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia, this crisis has suddenly become very real for many of them. In fact, there is now chatter that Congress could soon be completely closed down for a period of time in order “to protect lawmakers”…

Members of Congress are becoming increasingly anxious about coronavirus, and there is growing pressure on leadership to take steps to protect lawmakers — even potentially recessing for a period of weeks — two Democratic congressional sources said Sunday.

It would be nice if they were that concerned about protecting the rest of us, but I can definitely understand their desire for self-preservation.

But just a few days ago, the environment in D.C. was very different. In fact, U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz thought that it would be really funny to wear a gas mask when he voted on a coronavirus bill on March 4th…

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz donned a gas mask on March 4 while he voted on a bill that would dedicate billions of dollars to combating coronavirus as concerns rise over the spread of the disease.

“Reviewing the coronavirus supplemental appropriation and preparing to go vote,” Gaetz tweeted with a picture of himself wearing a gas mask while looking at a piece of paper before the vote.

I have always admired his fighting spirit, but mocking those that were concerned about this virus was completely inappropriate.

And now we have learned that he is one of the members of Congress that has been forced to “self-quarantine”. In fact, this news broke shortly after he took a ride on Air Force One…

Republican Georgia Rep. Doug Collins and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz both announced Monday afternoon that they would be self-quarantining themselves after learning that they interacted with a coronavirus-infected person in late February.

The announcement comes after Collins just spent Friday with President Donald Trump visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Gaetz was reportedly on Air Force One on Monday.

Let us pray that Gaetz is not infected and that he did not expose anyone on board Air Force One to the virus.

If what I just shared with you was not bad enough, now we have learned that Trump’s new chief of staff has also been forced into self-quarantine…

President Donald Trump’s new chief of staff Mark Meadows announced Monday that he will be self-quarantining after possibly meeting the individual who attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) while infected with coronavirus.

Mark Meadows was advised this weekend that he might have come in contact with the individual. Meadows took a precautionary test which came back negative. Meadows’ chief of staff Ben Williamson said: “He’ll be self-quarantined till the 14 day period passes Wednesday.”

It is a good sign that the initial test came back negative, and let us pray that Meadows will be perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, a priest in Washington D.C. has become a confirmed case just a week after he “shook hands with more than 500 worshippers”. The following comes from reporter Sam Sweeney…

BREAKING: A D.C. priest has Coronavirus. He offered communion and shook hands with more than 500 worshippers last week and on February 24th. All worshippers who visited the Christ Church in Georgetown must self-quarantine. Church is cancelled for the first time since the 1800’s

Was he infected when he shook all of those hands?

Let us hope not.

Before too long, hardly anyone is going to want to shake hands anymore. People are deathly afraid of this virus because they are watching what is going on elsewhere in the world.

In Italy, the government has decided to try to quarantine the entire country because the death toll just keeps spiraling higher.

This virus is no laughing matter. It is being reported that some residents of a nursing home in Kirkland, Washington have gone from showing no symptoms at all to dropping dead “in just a matter of hours”…

Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, outside of Seattle, has seen 15 of its residents die after contracting COVID-19, and dozens of its workers haven fallen ill. The center’s remaining 55 residents are going to be tested for the virus, and while only six of them are currently sick, that doesn’t necessarily mean good news, The New York Times reports.

As the Times put it, Life Care “had seen some residents go from no symptoms to death in just a matter of a few hours.” “It was surprising and shocking to us that we have seen that level of escalation from symptoms to death,” said Tim Killian, a spokesperson for the nursing home. Efforts to contain the spread from Life Care aren’t going well either, seeing as 70 of the center’s 180 workers were out sick as of Sunday, but “there weren’t enough test kits yet for them,” the Times reports.

The more that we learn about this virus, the more frightening it becomes.

In New Jersey, the very first confirmed case says that COVID-19 spread very rapidly “to both his lungs”…

The 32-year-old physician’s assistant, a non-smoker with no underlying health conditions, believes he contracted it while attending a medical conference in Times Square last weekend, saying the coronavirus spread quickly to both his lungs.

“The virus is everything. Dirarrhea, watery eyes, shortness of breath, chest pain, you name it. High fever,” he said. “Every day is getting worse.”

Does that sound like something you want to catch?

Of course not.

I am still hoping that this outbreak will start to subside before it becomes a horrifying global pandemic that kills millions of people.

But so far all efforts to contain this virus have failed, and local officials are preparing for the worst.

In fact, New York has apparently developed a plan to use convicts “to bury the dead”…

If New York City has a plague year, there’s a plan for its prisoners—not to protect them from infection in their tight quarters, but to use convicts to make New York State branded hand sanitizers and, if it comes to that, prisoners at Rikers to bury the dead.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo Monday, citing concerns about profiteers selling overpriced hand sanitizer, announced that CorCraft, a company that uses New York State prison labor paid between 16¢ and $1.14 an hour, would be making 100,000 gallons a week of NY-branded hand sanitizer.

I don’t know about you, but to me those two paragraphs are extremely chilling.

And as this outbreak intensifies, we continue to get more warnings that our already stressed healthcare system will soon be utterly overwhelmed…

Looking at how COVID-19 affected China can provide a preview of what it’ll look like in the U.S. In China, “around 80 percent of those infected with the coronavirus had symptoms of a bad cold and are expected to recover. Another 14 percent became severely ill, and 5 percent became critically ill,” Gupta writes. So according to estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services, that translates to about 200,000 people needing intensive care in the case of a moderate outbreak. That could be a big problem, seeing as the U.S. has less than 100,000 ICU beds.

So what are we going to do?

Will we start setting up temporary “quarantine camps” like they have in China?

If this outbreak continues to escalate, we could soon see things in this country that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago.

The best way to ensure that you never have to deal with this virus is to avoid it completely.

Unfortunately, that is exceedingly difficult to do because scientists are discovering that this virus spreads from person to person incredibly easily…

Aerosolized coronavirus can hang in the air for at least 30 minutes and travel up to 14 feet – approximately twice the “safe distance” recommended by health officials, according to SCMP.

The study, conducted by a team of Chinese government epidemiologists from Hunan province, also found that the virus can survive for days on a surface where respiratory droplets land.

Once this virus is in every community in the United States, how will you avoid it?

Some people will simply decide to stay home for as long as it takes, but for most people that just isn’t possible.

Hopefully we will never get to that point.

Hopefully this outbreak will really begin to fade when winter ends.

But at this moment the immediate future looks very bleak, and immense fear is spreading all across America.

Here Are 18 Breathtaking Facts About The Stock Market Crash Of 2020, And Experts Are Warning This Is Far From Over

We haven’t seen anything like this since the last financial crisis erupted in 2008. Wall Street has been gripped by a tremendous amount of fear, and the volatility that we are witnessing would have been unimaginable just a couple of months ago. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,013 points. To put that in perspective, the largest single day decline that we witnessed in 2008 was just 777 points. A disagreement between Saudi Arabia and Russia about oil prices coupled with increasing concern about the coronavirus pushed many traders into panic mode, and the result was absolutely stunning. Hopefully stock prices will bounce back throughout the rest of this week, but many experts are warning that this is just the beginning of the carnage. The stock market crash of 2020 is here, and the losses are already staggering. Just consider these facts…

#1 We just watched the largest single day point decline in stock market history. The old record of 1,190 points was just set on February 27th, and the drop on Monday smashed it by more than 800 points.

#2 The 7.79% decline for the Dow was the largest single day percentage drop since October 15th, 2008.

#3 Stocks plummeted so rapidly Monday morning that a key market circuit breaker was triggered just minutes after the opening bell.

#4 It was the very first time since 1997 that a market circuit breaker has been triggered.

#5 Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now down 19 percent from the all-time high that we witnessed just three weeks ago.

#6 The S&P 500 is also down 19 percent from the peak of the market.

#7 The Russell 2000 has plummeted 23.5 percent, and it is now firmly in bear market territory.

#8 On Monday, tech’s “big five” lost more than 320 billion dollars in market value.

#9 According to Zero Hedge, total U.S. trading volume “on a 10-day moving average basis, is now higher than during the meltdown in 2008.” In other words, stocks are being dumped at a pace that is absolutely mind blowing.

#10 The yield on 10 year Treasury notes dipped below 0.5 percent on Monday for the first time ever.

#11 The price of oil fell more than 24 percent during Monday’s trading session.

#12 That represented the second largest single day oil price decline ever recorded.

#13 The S&P 500 Energy Sector dropped 20 percent on Monday, and that was the worst day for that index that we have ever seen.

#14 All major U.S. banking stocks fell by double-digit percentages during Monday’s session.

#15 European stocks are now down a total of 22.5 percent from the peak of the market.

#16 The Bloomberg U.S. Financial Conditions Index is now the “tightest” it has been since the last financial crisis. That has very serious implications for “the real economy”.

#17 Since the end of World War II, there have been 12 official recessions in the United States. 8 of them were preceded by bear markets, and 3 of them were preceded by a market correction.

#18 All it is going to take is one more fairly bad day, and all of the major U.S. stock indexes will be in bear market territory.

In the short-term, we should hopefully see at least somewhat of a bounce. President Trump is promising emergency tax relief, and the Fed has responded to all of this carnage by doing what it does best…

As part of its continuing efforts to make sure the funding, or repo, markets are working properly, the central bank said it will up the amount it offers in overnight operations from $100 billion to $150 billion through Thursday.

Every time we see a surge of panic in the marketplace, the Fed is either going to cut interest rates or flood the system with more money.

And since there isn’t much room left to cut rates, the Fed will increasingly be forced to use option number two.

But if this coronavirus continues to spread all over the globe, no amount of Fed manipulation is going to fix things. The following is how one analyst described how many investors are feeling at this moment…

“They want out. Big time. The sky is falling. Get out, get out while you can. Wall Street’s woes have to eventually hit Main Street’s economy hard.”

Economic activity all over the globe is grinding to a standstill, and the economic impact of this virus will just continue to get worse until this outbreak has finally peaked.

We don’t know if that will be next week, next month or next year.

But until then, many investors “aren’t going to come back into the stock market”…

“We’re seeing borderline panic because of fear,” says R.J. Grant, director of equity trading at investment bank KBW. “Uncertainty is what’s causing all of this. We know there’s going to be an economic impact, but we just don’t know how big. Until we get clarity, people aren’t going to come back into the stock market, that’s for sure.”

In other words, things may not return to normal for the stock market for an extended period of time.

Earlier this year, an epic “melt up” pushed stock prices to the most overvalued levels that we have ever seen in U.S. history. It was inevitable that they would fall dramatically at some point, and it appears that fear of this coronavirus outbreak is the straw that finally burst the bubble.

But even after the immense carnage that we have already witnessed, stocks are still tremendously overvalued. In order for price-to-sales and price-to-earnings ratios to return to their long-term averages, we would probably need stock prices to fall another 30 to 40 percent.

Of course our system is not in any condition to handle a decline of that magnitude. Keep watching for a derivatives crisis if stocks continue to fall, because it is likely that we will see some big problems there. Our system is designed to operate during very stable times, and the sort of volatility that we are now witnessing can cause catastrophic losses very rapidly just like we saw in 2008.

We still don’t know if this coronavirus outbreak will be a minor pandemic that will only kill thousands of people or if it will be a truly historic pandemic that will kill millions.

We shall hope for the best, but we will also continue to prepare for the worst.

Meanwhile, say a prayer for the poor souls that still have money in the stock market, because the days ahead are likely to be very stressful for them.

The Bible Says That There Will Be “Pestilences” In The Last Days

Jesus specifically warned us that there would be “pestilences” in the end times, and so if we really are approaching the time of His return this is one of the things that we should be watching for. Of course we don’t know if COVID-19 is one of the “pestilences” that Jesus was referring to, but in recent days it has greatly distressed me to see so many Christians attempting to downplay the severity of this virus. The number of confirmed cases and the global death toll have both been rising at an exponential rate day after day, and experts are warning that over half of the population of the world could eventually get this virus, but so many voices out there are boldly assuring people that they don’t have anything to be concerned about even though they don’t have any medical credentials at all. Personally, I think that it pays to listen to the experts during a crisis like this, and the experts are telling us that millions could soon die. In fact, as you will see below, a doctor that sat on the White House Homeland Security Council is saying that this is the most “frightening disease” that he has ever encountered. After everything that we have already learned about this virus, anyone that is not taking this pandemic seriously is not being wise.

But is this just another pandemic that will come and go, or is this one of the “pestilences” that we were warned about almost 2000 years ago?

In Luke chapter 21, Jesus explained to His disciples what conditions would be like just prior to His return, and in verse 11 He specifically warned that there would be “pestilences”. The following comes from the King James Version…

¹¹And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

We have definitely seen a rise in seismic activity in recent years, billions of locusts are devouring crops from eastern Africa all the way to China right now, and Australia just had the worst harvest season that they have ever recorded.

So it is interesting to note that the stage is being set for some of the other signs that Jesus mentioned at the very same time that this coronavirus outbreak is starting to spiral out of control.

Only time will tell if COVID-19 is truly one of the “pestilences” that Jesus was referring to, but at this point it has become exceedingly clear that we should all be taking it very seriously.

This virus jumps from person to person with incredible ease, and it has a death rate that is about 34 times higher than the ordinary flu. In fact, the death rate for COVID-19 is actually higher than the death rate during the Spanish Flu pandemic. And let us never forget that the Spanish Flu pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people from 1918 to 1920.

I do not understand why anyone would possibly want to try to downplay this outbreak, and those that are doing so could end up greatly contributing to the spread of this virus.

Proverbs 22:3 says this…

³A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.

Fortunately for us, this outbreak started on the other side of the globe and so we had some time to prepare before it got here.

But now the number of confirmed cases inside the United States is starting to explode, and we are being warned that millions could die.

So will you be like the prudent man in the Book of Proverbs?

Sadly, a lot of people out there don’t seem to grasp the seriousness of what we are potentially facing.

According to Dr.Richard Hatchett, “50 – 70 percent of the global population” could eventually end up catching this virus…

An infectious diseases expert at the forefront of the search for a coronavirus vaccine said on Friday that it was the most “frightening disease“ he’s ever encountered, and that “war is an appropriate analogy” for what the country is facing, as “50 – 70 percent of the global population” may become infected.

Dr. Richard Hatchett, who sat on the White House Homeland Security Council in 2005 – 2006 and was a principal author of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan, and currently heads the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, told the UK’s Channel 4:

“This is the most frightening disease I’ve ever encountered in my career, and that includes Ebola, it includes MERS, it includes SARS. And it’s frightening because of the combination of infectiousness and a lethality that appears to be manyfold higher than flu.”

That sure sounds like a “global pestilence” to me.

Let us pray that he is completely wrong.

But as we pray, it will also be important for us to take recommended precautions. During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned that the elderly and those with “underlying conditions” will need to make adjustments to their lifestyles immediately…

“If you are an elderly person with an underlying condition, if you get infected, the risk of getting into trouble is considerable. So it’s our responsibility to protect the vulnerable,” he said.

“When I say ‘protect,’ I mean right now. Not wait until things get worse. Say no large crowds, no long trips. And above all, don’t get on a cruise ship.”

Personally, I think that is great advice for all of us.

If you have family members or friends that are not taking this outbreak seriously, you need to try to get through to them.

According to documents that have been leaked to the public, U.S. hospitals “are preparing for 96 million coronavirus infections”…

US hospitals are preparing for 96 million coronavirus infections and nearly half a million deaths from the outbreak, leaked documents have revealed.

The spread of the deadly disease could be far worse than officials claim, with 480,000 Americans expected to die from the virus and 4.8 million hospitalized, according to a presentation hosted by The American Hospital Association (AHA) in February.

Of course there are some experts that are warning that this outbreak will be even worse, and if that happens we could be facing a societal meltdown of epic proportions.

For years, Bible-believing Christians all over America have been preaching that Jesus is coming back soon.

And for years, we have seen so many other pieces of the end times prophetic scenario start to come together.

Now a global pestilence has erupted, and in Luke 21 we were specifically warned to watch for “pestilences” in the last days.

Once again, only time will tell if COVID-19 is one of those “pestilences”, but without a doubt all of us should be taking this virus very, very seriously.

Out Of Time: U.S. Cases Explode As The Coronavirus Pandemic Reaches A Tipping Point

If you thought that we had more time before this coronavirus pandemic exploded out of control in the United States, I am sorry to say that you are out of luck. In all of the major nations in the western world, the number of confirmed cases escalated dramatically over the past few days. Here in the U.S., COVID-19 has now reached 33 states, and the number of confirmed cases seems to literally be changing every few minutes as more announcements are made. Over the weekend, we witnessed another wild round of panic buying as people feverishly stocked up for an extended pandemic, but at least Americans are not throwing punches at each other over toilet paper like we are witnessing elsewhere in the world. Needless to say, all of this insanity is badly rattling Wall Street. The markets are going absolutely nuts, and it looks like this could be a truly historic week. Much more importantly, it looks like any hope of containing this virus is now completely dead. In fact, Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the Food and Drug Administration just told the entire nation that we are “past the point of containment” now.

Once this virus gets into an area, it can spread like wildfire. If you doubt this, just look at what is happening in New York. Just a few days ago there was one confirmed case, and now there is 105. The following comes from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo…

UPDATE: There are 16 additional confirmed cases of #Coronavirus in NYS, bringing total to 105.

Westchester: 82

NYC: 12

Nassau: 5

Rockland: 2

Saratoga: 2

Suffolk: 1

Ulster: 1

We’re testing aggressively & we are seeing the number of confirmed cases go up as expected.

Cuomo also shocked many members of the media when he absolutely lambasted the CDC. The guidelines that the CDC imposed upon the states greatly suppressed the amount of testing up to this point, and Cuomo seems to be among those that believe that this was a huge mistake…

The governor said that officials are working hard to identify new cases but have been greatly hindered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), saying it is ‘outrageous and ludicrous’ that the agency has not authorized private labs to conduct automated tests.

‘CDC, wake up. Let the states test. Let private labs test. Let’s increase as quickly possible our testing capacity so we identify the positive people, so we can isolate them,’ he said.

It would be difficult to overstate the anger that many Americans are feeling toward the CDC right now. So far, South Korea has been able to test more than 140,000 of their citizens for COVID-19, but as of Saturday the CDC had tested fewer than 1,600…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has tested 1,583 people for the coronavirus since the first cases were identified in the U.S. in January, health officials said Saturday.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn told reporters at the White House that figure would increase as more tests are shipped nationwide to address demand. But officials made clear that an individual could be tested only if it was approved by a doctor or public health official, contradicting President Trump’s pervious claims about test availability.

If the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is rising so rapidly with such limited testing, what will happen to the numbers now that testing will really be ramping up?

I think that we all know that answer.

Originally, U.S. officials had hoped to keep any outbreaks inside the United States strictly contained, but now that plan is out the window.

On Sunday, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams openly admitted that we have now shifted to the mitigation phase…

The US response to coronavirus has now shifted from containment to mitigation, Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“Initially, we had a posture of containment so that we could give people time to prepare for where we are right now. We’re shifting into a mitigation phase, which means that we’re helping communities understand you’re going to see more cases,” Adams said.

So how many more cases will we ultimately see?

Chillingly, some experts believe that it will be in the millions.

If that turns out to be accurate, can you imagine what that will do to our economy?

Things are really starting to get crazy out there. On Sunday, we learned that even U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has gone into “self-quarantine” because he came into contact with someone that was infected by the virus.

For the moment, our healthcare system will be able to handle the number of cases, but that could soon change.

In fact, it is being estimated that all available hospital beds could be completely filled by May 8th…

A sobering analysis of how coronavirus is likely to impact the US healthcare system suggests that hospitals will be quickly overwhelmed with patients, and that all available beds will be filled by around May 8th if the virus tracks with Italy’s figures and 10% of patients require an ICU.

Of note, the Straits Times reported last week that thousands of people were waiting for hospital beds in South Korea as the disease surges.

Liz Specht, a PhD in biology and the associate director of Science and Technology for the Good Food Institute laid out her concerns in a lengthy Twitter thread on Friday, which you can see here on Twitter, or continue reading below.

So if you get sick after that, you may be out of luck.

Over in Italy, this pandemic has already progressed to an extremely dangerous stage. The Italians now have the highest death toll of anywhere outside of China, and the number of confirmed cases has been escalating at a pace that is difficult to believe.

In a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, the Italian government has locked down “more than a quarter of its population”…

The Italian government is locking down 17 million people—more than a quarter of its population—including in Milan, the surrounding Lombardy region and 14 neighboring provinces, in the most sweeping steps any European country has prepared to take against the coronavirus epidemic.

A decree from the Italian Prime Minister’s office says people living in Lombardy, where Milan is the capital, and the named provinces in Lombardy’s nearby regions must “absolutely avoid any movement into and out of the areas.”

Will that work?

We better hope so, because the progression of this outbreak in Italy has been truly frightening…

#Coronavirus in Italy:

1st Feburary: 2 cases

20th February: 3 cases

22nd Feburary: 62 cases, 2 deaths

28th February: 528 cases, 12 deaths

1st March: 1694 cases, 34 deaths

4th March: 3089 cases, 107 deaths

8th March: 7375 cases, 366 deaths & counting

Terrible.

Of course we will see similar numbers in country after country pretty soon.

In the UK, they appear to be on a very similar track…

Confirmed coronavirus cases, UK:

March 8: 273 people

March 5: 115 people

March 2: 39 people

February 28: 20 people

February 25: 12 people

February 22: 8 people

Fighting this virus has been compared to trying to fight the air, because COVID-19 spreads from person to person really easily.

In fact, one team of scientists is now telling us that it looks like it may “spread through air-conditioning units”…

Traces of the coronavirus found in a hospital air duct has led scientists to believe the disease could be spread through air-conditioning units, making it more contagious than initially thought.

Swab analysis of rooms used by three coronavirus patients by experts at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases in Singapore suggest that the respiratory illness spreads easier than previously thought.

Where will this end?

Is it inevitable that there will be a raging pandemic in every nation on Earth?

If millions die from this virus, global financial markets will utterly collapse, economic conditions will be unimaginable, great civil unrest will erupt all over the planet and our society will be unrecognizable.

So far, this virus has a higher death rate than the Spanish Flu, and the Spanish Flu pandemic killed between 50 million and 100 million people.

This is not a drill. This pandemic is out of control and the dead bodies are really starting to pile up. The months ahead are going to be really challenging, but with God’s help we will find a way to get through this.

Shocking New Study Concludes That The “Best Case Scenario” For A COVID-19 Pandemic Is 15 Million Dead

Over the past week, the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 outside of China more than tripled once again. Hopefully it is extremely unlikely that such a rapid growth rate will continue, because if it does, there will be more than a million confirmed cases outside of China just a month from now. I don’t even want to imagine the level of fear that would cause, and needless to say that would be absolutely devastating for the entire global economy. Of course if we do get to a million confirmed cases, there won’t be any way to keep it from spreading everywhere on the entire globe, and the ultimate death toll could be unimaginable.

According to the WHO, the current death rate for this outbreak is 3.4 percent, and many experts believe that it will continue to go higher.

That means that a whole lot of people will die if this virus cannot be contained somehow.

Researchers at a major university in Australia modeled seven different scenarios for how a COVID-19 pandemic might go, and in the “best-case scenario” the death toll was 15 million…

New modeling from The Australian National University looks at seven scenarios of how the COVID-19 outbreak might affect the world’s wealth, ranging from low severity to high severity.

Four of the seven scenarios in the paper examine the impact of COVID-19 spreading outside China, ranging from low to high severity. A seventh scenario examines a global impact in which a mild pandemic occurs each year indefinitely.

But even in the low-severity model — or best-case scenario of the seven, which the paper acknowledged were not definitive — ANU researchers estimate a global GDP loss of $2.4 trillion, with an estimated death toll of 15 million.

A pandemic that kills 15 million people would change everything.

I sincerely hope that we don’t see anything like that, but other experts are coming up with similar projections. A Harvard epidemiologist is warning that 40 to 70 percent of the entire global population will eventually catch this virus, and Mike Adams is projecting that more than two million Americans could be dead by July 4th “if domestic travel is not aggressively halted”…

Today I finished tweaking the first draft of a pandemic projection model that simulates the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. The assumptions of the model are explained here, and you will find they are extremely conservative (using R0 value of just 1.82, for example).

The model’s predictions are nothing short of apocalyptic if the virus is allowed to spread without restraint across the United States. According to the model, there will be 2.16 million dead Americans by July 4th if domestic travel is not aggressively halted very soon (see the full projections below). This is not a prediction, since I believe that state governments and the federal government will intervene long before July 4th to declare, essentially, medical martial law.

Let us pray that nothing like this ever happens.

But if we all stick our heads in the sand and pretend that this virus isn’t a major threat, that will just make matters a lot worse.

At this point, the truth is that we don’t really know the true extent of the outbreak in the United States because authorities are just now starting to ramp up testing. Vice-President Pence had hoped to get a million testing kits to local communities this week, but that is simply not going to happen…

Mike Pence admitted Thursday that the administration will not be able to follow meet its promise to deliver one million coronavirus testing kits by the end of the week.

‘We don’t have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate the demand going forward,’ Pence said during a visit to a 3M Company plant in Minnesota Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, things are really starting to get weird out there.

The number of confirmed cases in the Seattle area has surged to 70, and authorities have transformed an aging EconoLodge into a “quarantine village”…

The EconoLodge in Kent, which is in the heart of the Seattle–Tacoma metropolitan area, will be America’s first Covid-19 quarantine village. As cases and deaths surge in Washington state, officials aren’t constructing modular hospitals in two weeks like China did last month, but rather buying existing commercial properties, such as motels, and stuffing infected people within.

Markovich said another “Covid-19 quarantine village using modular units now underway at 1100 block of 128th St. in North Seattle. There has been no public announcement about this so far.”

I suppose that such facilities will be able to house a few hundred people, but what are local officials going to do if hundreds of thousands of people get the virus?

Once this virus begins to spread in a community, the number of cases can escalate at a staggering rate. If you have any doubt about this, just look at what is happening in France.

We will probably see that sort of a growth rate in certain communities here in the U.S., and that is truly chilling.

In Iran, the number of confirmed cases has now crossed the 3,500 mark, and it is being reported that “dozens of bodies” are piling up in Iranian morgues…

Dozens of bodies sheathed in black bags line the floor of an Iranian morgue, while workers in protective suits and masks busily walk among them.

It’s unclear which, if any, of the people whose bodies lie in the morgue were infected with the coronavirus gripping the country, in this footage from inside Qom’s Behesht-e Masoumeh morgue.

The official death toll in Iran is only 107 at this point, but many believe that the true number is much, much higher.

As usual, the Iranians are blaming their problems on the United States and Israel. In fact, one Iranian general is publicly claiming that this virus is “a manmade bioweapon” that was purposely deployed against China and Iran…

An Iranian military leader has suggested that the coronavirus is not a naturally occurring disease, and that it is a manmade bioweapon cultivated and released against China and Iran by a ‘hostile state’.

Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, an Iranian officer in charge of the country’s Civil Defense Organization claimed Tuesday that “A study of the consequences of the virus in terms of tolls or the extent of the epidemic and the type of media propaganda over this issue that is aimed at increasing fear and panic among people strengthens the speculations that a biological attack has been launched against China and Iran with economic goals.”

Of course the truth is that this virus has created a major crisis for the entire planet.

In the UK, there is so much anxiety about this virus that British supermarkets are actually preparing for “food riots”…

British supermarkets are prepared for food riots if panic buying becomes widespread in the worst-cast scenario of a coronavirus pandemic, a retail expert has said.

Former Tesco supply chain director Bruno Monteyne said a major outbreak of the virus would result in ‘panic buying, empty shelves and food riots’ but that at this stage retailers would revert to ‘feed the nation’ status to avoid anyone going hungry.

And all over the western world, fans are already being banned from major sporting events in order to help prevent the spread of this disease.

If this outbreak continues to rapidly escalate, the way that we live our lives is going to be dramatically altered. So let us pray for mercy, because we definitely need it.

Sadly, many Americans are not getting prepared for a potential pandemic because they have been told over and over again that this virus is not any more dangerous than the flu.

That is definitely not true. As I explained the other day, the flu usually has a death rate of about 0.1 percent each year, and this virus currently has a death rate of 3.4 percent…

“Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press briefing Tuesday. The rate describes the proportion of deaths among confirmed cases. And it was greater than the previous coronavirus CFR estimate (2 percent in China), far higher than the seasonal flu (which kills 0.1 percent of those infected on average), and even worse than the Spanish flu pandemic (which killed 2 to 3 percent of those infected).

Last century, the Spanish Flu pandemic killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people, and this virus currently has an even higher death rate.

Are you starting to understand?

This outbreak has the potential to kill millions upon millions of people, and anyone that is not taking it seriously is not being very wise at all.

Will This Coronavirus Outbreak Cause A New Financial Crisis And A Horrifying Economic Collapse?

The term “black swan event” is increasingly being used to describe this coronavirus outbreak, and many are concerned that what we are headed for will be much worse than what we experienced in 2008 and 2009. Already, we have witnessed a staggering drop in global demand, Wall Street has had to deal with the wildest week in eight years, and people all over the globe are hoarding toilet paper, face masks and hand sanitizer. That may sound like a plot from one of my books, but it is not. This is actually happening, and it appears that we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis.

It seems like just yesterday that everyone was freaking out because there were a few dozen confirmed cases here in the United States. Now there are 70 in the state of Washington alone…

A cruise ship remains at arms length from San Francisco and the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in Washington state ballooned to 70 on Thursday – pushing the U.S. total above 220 – as the global struggle against the outbreak intensified.

The nation’s death toll rose to 12, 11 of them in Washington. Fifty-one of the confirmed cases are in King County, home to Seattle, where ten of the deaths have occurred, state health officials said.

As I write this article, the total number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has now risen to 233, but of course that number is going to go much higher now that the U.S. has finally decided to ramp up testing for the virus.

If you live in the Seattle area, you are going to want to avoid public places for the foreseeable future. In fact, officials in King County are already recommending that all businesses “allow their employees to telecommute throughout March”…

A Washington state county, where 31 coronavirus cases and 9 deaths have been reported, has recommended to its 2.2 million residents that they should work from home to help slow the spread of the infectious disease, and further urged everyone over 60 to stay indoors.

Public Health officials in King County on Wednesday recommended that businesses allow their employees to telecommute throughout March in an effort to reduce the amount of face-to-face contact between large numbers of people during this “critical period” in the COVID-19 outbreak.

Unfortunately, other hotspots are starting to emerge as well. The total number of cases in California is up to 53, and the number of cases in New York just doubled…

California declared a state of emergency after a coronavirus-related death and 53 confirmed cases in the state. The number of infections in New York also doubled overnight to 22 as the state ramps up its testing.

Predictably, U.S. stocks plunged on Thursday as the bad news came rolling in. By the end of the trading session, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 969 points…

Stocks plunged on Thursday, erasing most of the steep gains in the previous session, as markets remained highly volatile in the face of the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day 969.58 points, or 3.5%, lower at 26,121.28 after tanking nearly 1,150 at its session low. The S&P 500 dropped 3.3%, or 106.18, to 3,023.94 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.1%, or 279.49, to 8,738.60. All 11 S&P sectors finished the day in the red. Stocks turned sharply lower as the 10-year Treasury yield fell to an all-time low below 0.9%.

This is precisely the sort of wild market behavior that we witnessed during the financial crisis of 2008. One day stocks would be way down, and the next day they would be way up. When we see extreme volatility such as this, it is a clear indication that investors are very nervous.

After watching what transpired on Thursday, one trader described the market’s current behavior as “a super-puke”…

Watching the markets today – as The Dow plunged 1000 points, Treasury yields collapsed to record lows, credit markets imploded, and demands for more Fed intervention exploded – has one veteran trader remarking, “this is becoming a super-puke.”

Of course if this coronavirus outbreak starts to fade, it is entirely possible that the markets could settle back down.

But that hasn’t happened so far, and experts are warning that we should expect to see more market volatility ahead. Here is one example…

“We expect markets to remain volatile,” Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a note. “The unfolding nature of the coronavirus threat—both real and perceived—is not yet quantifiable, and, as such, the current global policy response can’t immediately be judged as sufficient or insufficient for restoring investor confidence in the short term.”

Meanwhile, the fear that this coronavirus outbreak has created is hitting the real economy exceedingly hard.

In fact, the CEO of Southwest Airlines says that his company “lost several hundred million dollars in a week’s time” because people are so afraid to travel right now…

Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly told CNBC on Thursday that the company has lost several hundred million dollars in a week’s time thanks to a decline in bookings amid increasing fears over COVID-19. Kelly added that the drop-off was “noticeable” and “precipitous” and has continued declining on a daily basis.

We are seeing similar things happen in industry after industry.

So what is going to happen if this outbreak continues to intensify in the months ahead?

Needless to say, we could soon be facing a worst case scenario for the global economy. According to Egon von Greyerz, the party is indeed “over” and we are headed for the worst economic crisis that any of us have ever experienced…

This is it! The party is over. The world is now facing the gravest economic and social downturn in Modern Times (18th century). We are now entering a period of global crisis that will change the world for a very long time to come. This should come as no surprise to the people who have studied history and also read my articles for the last few years. Many others have also warned about the same thing. But since MSM never talks about the excesses in the world or the risks, 99.9% of people are totally unprepared for what is coming next.

Will he be correct?

We shall see.

It would be wonderful if this virus would just go away and life could get back to normal. Unfortunately, this crisis just seems to escalate with each passing day.

On Thursday morning, police were actually called out to a Costco in southern California because “toilet paper, paper towels, and bottled water were out of stock”…

Deputies responded to the Chino Hills Costco at 10.15am on Thursday morning after receiving a report of a disturbance, a San Bernadino County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman told DailyMaill.com.

On the scene, deputies learned that ‘a large group of customers were upset’ that items such as toilet paper, paper towels, and bottled water were out of stock, said Public Information Officer Cindy Bachman.

All over America, people have been hoarding essential supplies like crazy. If people are this delirious already, how are they going to act once things start getting really bad?

It was inevitable that stock prices would crash from the ridiculously elevated levels that we witnessed earlier this year.

And the next economic downturn has been building for a really long time.

But now events are starting to move at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking, and it looks like all of our lives are about to change in a major way.

“Coronavirus Anxiety” Is Running Rampant All Over America, And This Could Be Only Just The Beginning…

All across the United States people are getting really stressed out about COVID-19. Every effort to contain the virus has failed, cases have started to pop up all over America, and the latest numbers show that it is 34 times more deadly than the flu. And what makes this particular coronavirus even more frightening is the fact that it is so easy to catch. You can become infected simply by breathing in the air around you, it can live on solid surfaces for days, and some victims can carry it around for weeks before ever showing any symptoms. As this virus continues to spread, literally no public place will be safe, and that is really freaking a lot of people out.

But so far only 11 Americans have died from the virus.

If thousands start dying in this country, what is our national mood going to be like at that point?

Already, the level of stress that we are witnessing is very alarming. The following comes from an NPR article about the “national anxiety” that we are currently experiencing…

And, as the coronavirus spreads, our unanswered questions can make us feel vulnerable or fearful. “Will it come to my community” or “Am I at risk?’

“We’ve got national anxiety at the moment, a kind of shared stress, and we are all in a state of extreme uncertainty,” says Catherine Belling, an associate professor at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, who studies the role of fear and anxiety in health care.

Of course there are very good reasons to be concerned about this virus.

More than 3,000 people have already died around the world, and the horrors that we have seen elsewhere on the globe are starting to happen here.

And with each startling headline, the level of anxiety is going to go higher.

All of a sudden, large numbers of Americans are extremely afraid to touch each other or anything around them. The following comes from a Washington Post article entitled “Coronavirus anxiety is everywhere, and there is no cure”…

America this week began to consider the existential threat of a doorknob. The horror of a touch-screen in the self-checkout lane. The inescapable doom that accompanies any trip on public transportation. The realization of how much, exactly, we all touch our faces each day: constantly.

Last week, you pressed elevator buttons with abandon. You weren’t afraid of the free weights in the gym. You washed your hands for barely enough time to say “Happy Birthday” once, let alone sing it twice.

This outbreak has already radically altered the behavior of millions of Americans, and we are probably still only in the very early chapters.

Fear of this virus is also causing many of us to stockpile supplies like crazy. Just check out the following numbers from Nielsen…

Fears about a worsening coronavirus outbreak have led shoppers in the U.S. and other hard-hit countries to begin stocking up on supplies to fill “pandemic pantries,” a new report from Nielsen suggests.

Sales of sought-after hand sanitizers have risen 73% in dollar value in the four weeks ending Feb. 22, compared with the same period in 2019, Nielsen says. Similarly, medical masks sales spiked 319%, aerosol disinfectants rose 47% and thermometers increased 32%.

If this outbreak continues to intensify, it is inevitable that shortages will begin to emerge.

So if there is something that you need to purchase, you should go get it as soon as you can.

Each new day brings more shocking revelations. On Wednesday, we found out that the number of confirmed cases in New York has risen to 11…

Another family in New York has been confirmed to have the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted this afternoon.

The family from New Rochelle is believed to have been in contact with the 50-year old attorney, who has since been hospitalized. The attorney and his family were confirmed to have the virus earlier today.

This brings the total number of confirmed cases in New York to 11.

Sadly, Governor Cuomo is expecting many more cases to pop up, and he told the press that trying to contain this virus “is literally like trying to stop air”…

“This is literally like trying to stop air, because somebody sneezes, it’s respiratory and it’s inevitable that it will continue to spread,” Cuomo told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier in the day, Cuomo said there “were going to be many, many people who test positive.”

On the other coast, six new cases were just confirmed in Los Angeles…

As the U.S. death toll hit 11 Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and county officials declared states of emergency and announced six additional cases of the deadly coronavirus that has health officials around the world scrambling for answers.

More than 130 cases have been confirmed across the nation. Los Angeles had confirmed just one before Wednesday’s announcement.

Alarmingly, one of the newly confirmed cases was a medical screener at LAX…

A medical professional who conducted passenger screenings at Los Angeles International Airport tested positive for the coronavirus late Tuesday, according to the Department of Homeland Security and an internal email obtained by NBC News.

The person last worked screening air travelers for illness on Feb. 21, DHS said in a statement, which also said the medical professional had worn the proper protective gear while working. The internal email described the person as a “contract medical screener” for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Just like we have seen in China, medical professionals in the western world are catching COVID-19 despite attempting to take proper precautions.

That just underscores how easily this virus passes from person to person.

As this outbreak continues to intensify, it is probably inevitable that some pretty extreme measures will be taken to get it under control.

In fact, we are already seeing college basketball games get canceled…

Chicago State became the first Division I men’s basketball program to cancel games due to the coronavirus outbreak, announcing on Tuesday the decision not to travel to Seattle University on Thursday or Utah Valley on Saturday.

The University of Missouri-Kansas City declared Wednesday the Roos men’s team would not travel to Seattle for its Saturday contest against the Redhawks.

And over in Italy it was just announced that all schools will be closed until mid-March…

Italy announced Wednesday it will temporarily close all its schools and universities as the country continues to grapple with a surge in coronavirus infections, according to new reports.

Those closures will begin Thursday and last until mid-March, CNBC reported.

Can you imagine if that happened in the United States?

Of course the kids would love it, and considering the overall quality of the education in our public schools they wouldn’t miss much anyway.

Even before this outbreak started, we were living at a time of great uncertainty, and this virus has certainly taken things to an entirely new level.

We still don’t know if this will become a true global pandemic that will kill millions of people, but many prominent voices are acknowledging that it is definitely a possibility. The following comes from Piers Morgan…

Should it become a global pandemic, as many experts now fear, then the consequences could be devastating. In 1918, the H1N1 ‘Spanish flu’ virus killed between 50-100 million people.

Tech titan Bill Gates, who spends much of his time and money combatting diseases with his charitable foundation, said: ‘In the past week, coronavirus has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.’

If COVID-19 does kill millions of people, it will cause fear on a scale that most of us would not even want to imagine right now.

Thanks to social media, information can spread across the globe in a matter of minutes. There is no way that global authorities will be able to keep the general public calm if things get bad enough, and health systems in the western world will be absolutely overwhelmed as multitudes of sick people swamp the hospitals.

Let us pray that such a scenario does not materialize.

But for now the numbers continue to grow at a frightening rate each day, and “coronavirus anxiety” is going to continue to grow right along with those numbers.

“It’s Like A Ghost Town”: Major Cities All Over The Globe Are Paralyzed By Fear Of COVID-19

We haven’t seen anything cause this much worldwide fear in a really long time. But even though there is so much fear, we still don’t know if this is going to evolve into the next great global pandemic that kills millions of people or not. I wish that I had a definitive answer for you. At this point we do know that the number of confirmed cases outside of China continues to rise at a very alarming rate, and we also know that this virus is about 34 times more deadly than the flu according to the latest numbers. But in order for it to kill millions of people, a substantial percentage of the global population would have to be infected, and we don’t know if that is actually going to happen.

But in major cities around the globe where there has been an eruption of COVID-19 cases, we are seeing severe disruptions in normal activity.

For example, now that several coronavirus deaths have been reported in the area, the lack of tourists has turned downtown Seattle into “a ghost town”…

In Seattle, bracing for the coronavirus also means preparing for what could be a devastating economic impact. Business owners and residents have already seen a drop-off in tourists in areas of the city that heavily depend on foot traffic.

“It’s like a ghost town,” Francisco said about the famous Pike Place Market where she has her shop.

If you have ever been to Pike Place Market, then you know that it is normally bustling with activity.

But now virtually everyone wants to stay away, and you can’t exactly blame them. With this virus on the loose, I wouldn’t want to venture down there either.

Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan has already declared a state of emergency, and this will give her the power to cancel a wide range of public events…

As the death toll climbed Tuesday, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, a Democrat, proclaimed a civil emergency. The declaration allows her to bypass regulations to increase city spending, contracting and borrowing to address the growing public health threat. It will also allow her office to close facilities and cancel events to prevent the virus from spreading further.

On the other side of the globe, the streets of Seoul are virtually empty right now…

The streets of Seoul, the South Korean capital, stood nearly empty this week. Those who do venture out wear masks. The normally busy subways have few passengers and riders make sure to sit far away from one another. Many residents are relying on grocery and restaurant delivery apps.

Most Americans don’t realize this, but the population of Seoul actually exceeds the population of New York City.

Normally it is one of the busiest cities on the entire planet, but due to the fear that more than 5,700 confirmed cases in South Korea has caused, it has also become something of “a ghost town”.

Speaking of busy cities, Beijing’s 21 million residents continue to wait for life to return to normal.

Most people are staying home as much as possible, and those that do venture out risk having their temperatures scanned “at regular checkpoints”…

Many shops are still closed in Beijing, and residents’ temperatures are scanned at regular checkpoints, as well as inside each store. On streets that are normally so crowded that people are forced to brush shoulders, those who are out keep a good distance from one another.

Could you imagine the uproar that would ensue if similar “checkpoints” were set up here in the United States?

Let us hope that we never get to that point.

In Milan, things are eerily quiet right now. In fact, nobody has seen the city this quiet in the entire modern history of Italy…

In Milan, Italy’s business capital and the center of the country’s outbreak, restaurants, bars and train stations are much less crowded than normal. The usually teeming Piazza del Duomo, home to the city’s cathedral and lined with shops and bars, was almost empty at points Monday.

Italian authorities are absolutely desperate to get this outbreak under control, and so they are implementing pretty extreme measures.

Incredibly, that even includes banning fans from all sporting events until April 3rd…

The Italian government have taken drastic measures to help prevent the outbreak of coronavirus by closing all sport events to fans throughout the entire country until April 3. Italy has been the worst-hit European country from the coronavirus, with 107 deaths so far.

It is nice that they have set a deadline, but what are they going to do if we get to April 3rd and this outbreak has gotten even worse?

Could it be possible that Italian fans will not be able to attend sporting events for the foreseeable future?

And will other western countries soon follow suit?

Our lives could be about to change in ways that we couldn’t even imagine just a few weeks ago.

In the UK, residents are being warned that they may soon have to “put their lives on hold for three months”…

Britons could be forced to put their lives on hold for three months under a ‘battle plan’ to combat Coronavirus amid warnings today that the deadly disease could incapacitate a fifth of the UK’s workforce.

Boris Johnson today set out the Government’s blueprint to deal with a mass outbreak of the bug that includes a raft of socially and economically costly contingency moves as a last resort.

Could you put your life on hold for three months?

Of course most major pandemics last longer than just three months. In fact, the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for three years and it killed tens of millions of people.

Hopefully this outbreak will not be anything like that.

But without a doubt, this is a truly horrible virus. The following is an excerpt from the account of a 25-year-old British man that actually caught COVID-19…

Day 12: I’ve had a relapse. Just as I thought the flu was getting better, it has come back with a vengeance. My breathing is laboured. Just getting up and going to the bathroom leaves me panting and exhausted. I’m sweating, burning up, dizzy and shivering. The television is on but I can’t make sense of it. This is a nightmare.

By the afternoon, I feel like I am suffocating. I have never been this ill in my life. I can’t take more than sips of air and, when I breathe out, my lungs sound like a paper bag being crumpled up. This isn’t right. I need to see a doctor. But if I call the emergency services, I’ll have to pay for the ambulance call-out myself. That’s going to cost a fortune. I’m ill, but I don’t think I’m dying — am I?

I certainly do not want to experience that, and I am sure that you do not want to either.

Coming into this year, I warned about what was ahead, but I definitely did not anticipate that we could potentially be facing a full-blown global pandemic by early March.

COVID-19 could change everything. I know that many are attempting to downplay the severity of this virus, and that is a huge mistake.

For the foreseeable future, the entire globe is going to be gripped by fear of this virus, and that has very serious implications for all of us.

Time To Debunk The Skeptics: COVID-19 Has A Death Rate That Is About 34 Times Higher Than The Flu

COVID-19 is an extremely deadly virus, and nobody should be trying to downplay the severity of this outbreak. By now, you have probably heard a lot of people try to convince you that COVID-19 is not that dangerous because the flu has killed far more people this winter. And that is true. But what they aren’t telling you is that the death rate from the flu is extremely low. Tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu each year, but if this coronavirus spreads all over the planet the death toll will be in the tens of millions. This coronavirus outbreak is likely only in the very early stages, and if it becomes as widespread as the flu, it will become a public health crisis unlike anything we have ever faced in modern times.

After taking a look at the numbers, hopefully you will understand what I am trying to say.

On Tuesday, the World Health Organization announced that the global death rate for COVID-19 is now 3.4 percent…

World health officials said Tuesday the case fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%.

“Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said.

I have a feeling that number will continue to go up, but for the purposes of this article let’s assume that number if accurate.

As for the flu, the CDC says that there will be between 32 million and 45 million illnesses in the United States during this flu season, and somewhere between 18,000 and 46,000 deaths.

That means that the death rate from the flu this year will be about one-tenth of one percent.

So can we please stop with the comparisons between COVID-19 and the flu?

COVID-19 is at least 34 times more deadly, and experts are warning that up to 70 percent of the global population could ultimately catch the virus.

If that happens, we will see a death toll in the tens of millions at a minimum.

Here in the United States, the death rate is running well above 3.4 percent so far. Out of 118 confirmed cases, nine victims have died so far…

The eighth and ninth persons confirmed to have died in the U.S. from the coronavirus lived in Washington state, just like the previous seven victims. Washington accounts for 27 of the 118 cases so far reported in the U.S., and state officials said 231 people are under public health supervision.

I have a feeling that the death rate in the U.S. will go down once we start testing more people, but we will see.

At this point, coronavirus clusters are starting to pop up all over the nation. For example, the number of victims in Santa Clara County has now risen to 11…

Santa Clara County announces 2 new cases of COVID-19 Total now 11.

Over on the east coast, a newly confirmed case in New York City is making headlines. Authorities are telling us that it is a “community spread case”, and this particular victim just happens to be a lawyer with a firm in midtown Manhattan…

The latest coronavirus case in New York City is a 50-year-old lawyer who resides in Westchester County, about 20 miles north of New York City, and is a partner at a firm based in midtown Manhattan, multiple sources confirmed to Business Insider. The office building is in the vicinity of Grand Central Terminal, which sees about 750,000 daily commuters.

Before he was finally diagnosed, was he spreading the virus to countless others in midtown Manhattan?

We shall see what happens in the coming days.

As I discussed yesterday, the U.S. has been much slower than other nations to conduct widespread testing for the virus, and it looks like that was a major mistake.

Down in South Florida, one woman was recently told by her doctor that she probably has COVID-19, but officials refused to test her for it…

In what may be the first case of coronavirus in South Florida, a woman who recently returned home from Italy says she was told by doctors at Jackson Memorial Hospital that she “likely” has COVID-19, but that they are unable to verify it because state and federal officials refused to conduct the necessary tests to confirm it.

“The doctor himself told me that, you know, he thinks that the results of my [preliminary] tests mean that I most likely have the COVID-19, but that the Department of Health did not want to pursue it further,” said the woman, who requested that her name not be used to protect her privacy. “It was either the Department of Health or the CDC that decided not to further pursue the inquiry. But I was basically told that it is most likely that I have this virus and that I should self-quarantine.”

As Dr. Matt McCarthy has said, this refusal to test probable patients is a national scandal. There is no excuse for this sort of negligence, and it has the potential to create all sorts of problems.

At this point, fear is spreading like wildfire all over the nation. Due to concerns about COVID-19, Twitter is asking “its entire workforce” to “work from home”…

Twitter is asking its entire workforce of 5,000 people to work from home, part of its effort to keep employees safe and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The company said working from home was mandatory for its workers in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, where there are higher rates of the COVID-19 disease.

Other companies are taking similar steps, and this will inevitably slow down the economy.

But this could be just the beginning. If you can believe it, one NBA owner is actually saying that the NBA could eventually “ban fans” from games if things get bad enough…

Marc Lasry, co-owner of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, told CNBC on Tuesday that sporting events could possibly ban fans if the coronavirus outbreak worsens.

“If you’re going to do it to basketball, you’re going to do it to baseball,” Lasry said on “Fast Money.” “I hope we don’t get there.”

I hope we don’t get there either.

Because once we start banning public gatherings, we won’t be able to go back to normal until this pandemic is over.

And sometimes pandemics can last for a very long time. The Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for three years and killed tens of millions of people. If what we are facing is similar, then all of our lives are about to change in a major way.

Sadly, some people are saying that if they get the virus they will actually purposely go into large crowds to try to spread it. Here is one example…

Denver Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca is getting major blowback over a controversial tweet sent on Friday.

CdeBaca quoted a tweet that said, “For the record, if I do get the coronavirus I’m attending every MAGA rally I can.”

How sick in the head do you have to be to say something like that?

We live at a time when hearts are growing very cold, and it is only going to get worse as time rolls along.

Hopefully by now most of my readers understand that we need to take COVID-19 very seriously.

This isn’t anything like the flu. This is an extremely deadly virus that has the potential to kill millions of Americans.

Let us continue to keep praying that this outbreak will eventually subside, but let us also continue to brace ourselves for a worst case scenario.

The Unstoppable Coronavirus vs. The “All-Powerful” Federal Reserve

Has the Federal Reserve finally met an opponent that it won’t be able to defeat? Ever since the last financial crisis, unprecedented intervention by the Fed at key moments has kept the economy and the financial system relatively stable. No matter what has come along, it has seemed like the Federal Reserve has always had an answer, and this has created an environment that has enabled the most ridiculous stock market bubble in U.S. history to grow to epic proportions. But now COVID-19 is perhaps the greatest challenge that the Fed has faced in modern times. No matter how low interest rates are pushed, and no matter how much helicopter money the Fed drops from the sky, it isn’t going to cause fearful Americans to go shopping, take trips or start businesses. And nothing that the Fed can do will be able to mitigate the severe disruptions to global supply chains that we are currently witnessing.

But that doesn’t mean that the Fed isn’t going to go back to the same old playbook that has worked so well in the past.

On Tuesday the Fed announced an emergency rate cut, and instead of soaring, stock prices absolutely tanked. In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day down 785 points…

The decision to cut rates by half a percentage point came two weeks before the Fed’s scheduled meeting as the central bank felt it was necessary to act quickly to combat the effect of the virus spreading worldwide. It’s the first such emergency action coming in between scheduled meetings since the financial crisis.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 785.91 points lower, or nearly 3%, to 25,917.41; it rose more than 300 points earlier in the day. The 30-stock average gyrated between sharp gains and solid losses after the decision was announced. The S&P 500 fell 2.8% to 3,003.37 while the Nasdaq Composite pulled back 3% to 8,684.09.

At this point, the Federal Reserve doesn’t have much room to reduce interest rates. But of course President Trump was disappointed in the Fed’s decision because he wanted an even bigger rate cut…

Trump tweeted following the Fed’s move – keeping up his longstanding practice of demanding lower rates.

‘The Federal Reserve is cutting but must further ease and, most importantly, come into line with other countries/competitors,’ Trump wrote. ‘We are not playing on a level field. Not fair to USA. It is finally time for the Federal Reserve to LEAD. More easing and cutting!’

Meanwhile, just about everyone else is using the word “panic” to describe this move by the Fed. The following example comes from Zero Hedge…

Instead, as it stands “it smells like panic” as more than one Wall Street veteran put it.

Worse, as BMO’s Ian Lyngen puts it, what happened after the Fed’s emergency 50bps rate cut, the biggest since Jerome Kerviel blew up SocGen, “the situation didn’t play out exactly as Powell might have envisioned.”

So just how bad is it? Well, as plunging stocks demonstrate, the Fed is this close from losing all credibility…. and since the market has been held up for the past 11 years on nothing but Fed faith – and trillions in Fed liquidity – this could be a very, very big problem.

If you can believe it, even CNBC’s Jim Cramer is saying that this move by the Fed has made him “nervous”…

Cramer went on to say that he’d previously been optimistic, despite the recent Dow freefall. But the Fed’s move has caused him to adopt a more cautious posture.

“It makes me feel, wow, the weakness must be much more than I thought,” Cramer said. “And I’ve been trying to be bullish, but I can’t.”

He added, “I’m now nervous. I’m more nervous than I was before.”

The Federal Reserve has almost entirely run out of interest rate ammunition already, and we aren’t even officially in a recession yet.

So what are they going to do once things get really bad?

A reduction in interest rates usually spurs the U.S. economy, but these are not normal times.

Even if interest rates were pushed all the way to the floor, it isn’t going to change the fact that global supply chains are collapsing and a large portion of the population is scared to death of this virus…

Lower borrowing costs typically spur more consumers to buy houses, cars and other products, and encourage businesses to purchase more equipment such as factory machines, computers.

But historically low rates can’t address delayed deliveries from China that leave store shelves half-filled and auto manufacturers short of imported parts. They can’t prod shoppers fearful of contracting the virus to visit malls and restaurants. And they can’t bring back throngs of foreign tourists to U.S. hotels and shopping centers, including many from China and other countries now subject to travel bans.

And the problems that we are seeing with global supply chains are expected to continue to get worse in the weeks ahead. In fact, Harvard Business Review is anticipating that the impact of this virus could peak “in mid-March”…

Reports on how the Covid-19 outbreak is affecting supply chains and disrupting manufacturing operations around the world are increasing daily. But the worst is yet to come. We predict that the peak of the impact of Covid-19 on global supply chains will occur in mid-March, forcing thousands of companies to throttle down or temporarily shut assembly and manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Europe. The most vulnerable companies are those which rely heavily or solely on factories in China for parts and materials. The activity of Chinese manufacturing plants has fallen in the past month and is expected to remain depressed for months.

But what if this virus just continues to explode all over the planet?

When I posted my last article yesterday, the number of confirmed cases outside of China had just surpassed the 10,000 mark.

As I write this, that number is just shy of the 13,000 mark, and by the time most of you read this article it will be even higher.

After interest rates are pushed all the way to the floor, “helicopter money” will be about the only weapon the Fed has left.

Normally, “helicopter money” pushes up stock prices, but in the middle of a horrifying global pandemic people are not going to want stocks.

Instead, there is going to be tremendous demand for food and other essential supplies, and “helicopter money” will just escalate prices to absolutely absurd levels.

Sadly, fear of this virus is already starting to cause this to happen…

Would you pay $149 for a two-pack of 12-ounce bottles of Purell? How about a single container of Clorox wipes for $44.25, plus $14.59 shipping?

As the coronavirus spreads and people rush to protect themselves and their families from getting sick, the U.S. is seeing heavy demand for everything from masks to hand sanitizer.

If you use Purell, I hope that you stocked up ahead of time.

There has never been a time like this before in all of American history, and what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

Now that the U.S. is planning to start testing more people, we are being warned that we could see an explosion in the number of confirmed cases in the weeks ahead.

If that happens, there is going to be a tremendous amount of fear.

But now is not a time for fear. Now is a time to be calm, to think rationally, and to act resolutely.

It is during moments of crisis that we find out who we really are, and hopefully this challenge will bring out the best in all of us.

New York Emergency Room Doctor: There Will Be “Thousands” Of Confirmed Cases In The U.S. “By Next Week”

Dr. Matt McCarthy, a staff physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, just went on national television and warned that there will be “thousands” of confirmed coronavirus cases inside the United States “by next week”. I certainly hope that he is completely wrong, but obviously he has a better vantage point for observing the progression of this outbreak than any of us do. As an emergency room doctor in New York, he is dealing with potential COVID-19 cases every single day. And as you will see below, he says that he has had to “plead to test people” and that it is a “national scandal” that more people have not been tested.

As I discussed in a previous article, up until just a few days ago the CDC has had extremely restrictive guidelines for who should be tested for the virus. Only those that have visited China recently and those that have had close contact with a known victim were supposed to be tested. Obviously this allowed a lot of potential victims to fall through the cracks, and now we have a major outbreak in the Seattle area.

Why couldn’t we have been able to test anyone that wanted to be tested from the very beginning? In South Korea, they have already “built drive-thru coronavirus screening locations”…

Health officials in South Korea tested 10,000 people for the coronavirus on Friday alone. This week, they built drive-thru coronavirus screening locations, giving hundreds of patients an assessment of their health in just 10 minutes.

The US announced its first coronavirus case on the same day South Korea did. But six weeks later, less than 500 potentially infected Americans have gotten tests, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency’s official test count — which had previously been updated daily — was stripped from the CDC site on Sunday, though US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told ABC the same day that the US had tested 3,600 people.

There is absolutely no reason why we can’t do at least as well as South Korea.

And without a doubt, a lot of doctors around the country are quite upset about the current state of affairs. During his appearance on CNBC, Dr. McCarthy explained that he literally has had to “plead to test people”…

“I’m here to tell you, right now, at one of the busiest hospitals in the country, I don’t have it at my fingertips,” he said. “I still have to make my case, plead to test people. This is not good. We know that there are 88 cases in the United States. There are going to be hundreds by the middle of the week. There’s going to be thousands by next week. And this is a testing issue.”

You can watch video of Dr. McCarthy making these comments right here. The fact that he believes that there will be “thousands” of confirmed cases by next week should be making headlines all over the nation. But so far it isn’t.

Ultimately, the CDC should be held accountable for dropping the ball so dramatically. Not only have they not been testing enough people up until now, it also turns out that the test kits they initially sent out were “problematic and potentially inaccurate”. The following comes from CNBC…

The CDC sent test kits earlier in the outbreak to public health labs around the country, but those kits were problematic and potentially inaccurate, CDC officials have since said. Because local clinicians can’t depend on the test kits, some have had to ship samples to a laboratory with the ability to run the tests, delaying the process of diagnosis and treatment.

This virus could become the biggest public health crisis of our lifetimes, and the CDC response has been a complete and total disaster.

At this point, coronavirus tests are still “not available yet in New York City”…

“Testing for coronavirus is not available yet in New York City,” city Department of Health spokeswoman Stephanie Buhle said in an email late Thursday. “The kits that were sent to us have demonstrated performance issues and cannot be relied upon to provide an accurate result.”

There is no excuse.

For weeks, hospitals all over the nation have had to send samples to the CDC for testing, and that has greatly limited the number of Americans that have been able to be tested.

If you can believe it, only 32 people in the entire state of New York have been tested so far, and Dr. McCarthy is calling that “a national scandal”…

The team at New York-Presbyterian Hospital is isolating suspected coronavirus patients and taking proper precautions to prevent the spread, McCarthy said, but “they’re hamstrung.”

“In New York state, the person who tested positive is only the 32nd test we’ve done in this state,” he said. “That is a national scandal.”

Of course he is right.

The mainstream media should be hammering this story like there is no tomorrow, but other than CNBC they have mostly been ignoring it.

Did officials at the CDC think that if they just neglected this crisis that it would go away?

A lot of people have been comparing COVID-19 to the flu, but that is not true at all.

This is an extremely insidious virus. Once it gets into the lungs, it starts killing cells as it moves along. And once enough cells are killed off, it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe…

It does this by attaching to and reproducing in tissue inside the lungs, where it kills cells in the process of spreading.

As the cells are killed they drop off the lungs’ linings and build up in clumps inside the organs, making it hard to breathe and triggering further infections.

The virus can also send the immune system into overdrive as it tries to fight off infection, triggering swelling which can lead to more breathing difficulties.

Does that sound like something that you want to catch?

Unfortunately, this virus is now out of control inside the United States. Newly confirmed cases are constantly popping up all over the country, and this crisis threatens to greatly accelerate our existing problems.

I truly hope that what we are facing is not nearly as dire as Dr. McCarthy is making it out to be. But nobody can deny that he is on the front lines of this battle every day, and right now he is warning that we have a complete and utter nightmare on our hands.

“Pandemic Proportions”: COVID-19 Is Starting To Spiral Out Of Control All Over The Globe

This is already the most frightening virus outbreak that we have seen in the past several decades, and it appears that it is just getting started. A week ago, there were about 3,000 confirmed cases outside of China and now there are more than 10,000. 4,812 cases have been confirmed in South Korea, 2,036 cases have been confirmed in Italy, and 1,501 cases have been confirmed in Iran at this point. Of course by the time you actually read this article those numbers are likely to be significantly higher. It is like we are watching a really bad Hollywood disaster movie play out right in front of our eyes, and so far every effort to contain this virus has failed. On Monday, Dr. Anthony Fauci stunned many people when he told NBC News that COVID-19 has likely reached “pandemic proportions”…

News of the additional deaths came after Dr Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NBC News on Monday that the disease had likely reached ‘pandemic proportions’ as 100 cases were confirmed across the U.S.

‘We’re dealing with an evolving situation. We’re dealing with clearly an emerging infectious disease that has now reached outbreak proportions and likely pandemic proportions,’ Dr Fauci said. ‘If you look at multiple definitions of what a pandemic is… multiple sustained transmissions of of a highly infectious agent in multiple regions of the globe.’

Dr. Fauci is definitely not an alarmist, and for him to use the word “pandemic” is a major red flag.

Last week a lot of people were pointing out that not a single American had died from this virus yet, but now six victims have died in the state of Washington alone…

Four more people have died of the coronavirus in Washington state, raising the death toll in the state and the nation to six, health officials said Monday.

Jeffrey Duchin, a health officer in King County and Seattle, said at a news conference Monday that five of the deaths were people from King County and one was from Snohomish County, north of Seattle.

If you live in the Seattle area, you need to understand that you are in the middle of a crisis zone. As I discussed yesterday, it is likely that the virus has been circulating in that region for weeks, and each day the number of potential carriers will only get higher.

At this point, local officials are specifically warning everyone to “avoid crowded settings if possible”…

“To increase your chances of staying healthy, avoid crowded settings if possible,” King County Public Health said on Twitter. “Especially if you are over 60, or have other chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, or a weakened immune system.”

There’s particular concern about the spread of the virus in nursing homes. One such facility, Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington, said in a statement that one of its residents and one of its associates have been diagnosed with COVID-19. The center is banning visitors for now.

And this doesn’t mean that you will need to change your behavior for a few days or even a few weeks.

At a minimum, if you live in the Seattle area you are going to want to avoid crowded settings for the next several months.

Of course it is just a matter of time before other major cities are facing similar outbreaks. In recent days the number of states with confirmed cases has grown quite a bit larger…

Arizona – 1
California – 20
Florida – 2
Illinois – 4
Massachusetts – 1
New York – 1
Oregon – 3
Rhode Island – 2
Washington state – 18 (includes 6 fatalities)
Wisconsin – 1

Unfortunately, this list probably only represents the very small tip of a very large iceberg. Up until just recently, the CDC was mandating that the only people that should be tested are those that have traveled to China or those that have had close contact with a known victim. By using such restrictive criteria, the number of Americans being tested was kept extremely low, and a lot of infected people slipped through the cracks.

Now this virus has escaped containment, and authorities are telling us that “community spread” is inevitable all over the United States.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 continues to sweep across much of the rest of the planet like wildfire.

In Iran, the fact that a top adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just died from the virus made headlines all over the globe…

AN adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died of coronavirus, state media reported today.

Mohammad Mirmohammadi, 71, died in hospital in Tehran as the pariah nation reels from a worsening outbreak that has left several senior officials in hospital.

But despite the fact that the number of confirmed cases in Iran is escalating at an exponential rate, and despite the fact that dozens of Iranians have already died, many Iranians continue to engage in the practice of “kissing and licking Shi’ite shrines throughout the country”…

Videos spreading on social media are showing Iranians kissing and licking Shi’ite shrines throughout the country as many call to close the shrines amid a severe coronavirus outbreak in the Islamic Republic.

The epicenter of the outbreak in Iran, Qom, is a religious city home to several shrines. The shrines remain open as some reports place the death toll in Iran in the hundreds.

Can you believe that?

We live at a time when it seems like much of the world has gone nuts. Most people believe whatever they feel like believing, and most people do whatever they feel like doing. But there are always consequences for our actions, and I have a feeling that this virus is going to spread particularly rapidly in the Middle East.

Here in the United States, it appears that this outbreak is far more extensive than we are being told. As the U.S. starts to finally ramp up testing, it is inevitable that a lot more existing cases will be found. In fact, in just a little while I will be posting an article on End Of The American Dream about an ER doctor in New York that is claiming that there is “going to be thousands” of confirmed cases inside this country by next week.

I don’t think that it is going to happen quite that rapidly, but it appears to be inevitable that the number of cases is going to be steadily rising.

This is not a drill. This is an exceedingly dangerous virus that is killing people all over the planet, and we need to prepare for a scenario in which this crisis could extend for many months or even for several years.

All Of A Sudden, People All Over America Are Prepping Like Crazy

I can’t remember a time when we have seen such widespread “panic buying” all over the nation. Today I spoke with someone that just visited the closest Wal-Mart in this area, and I was told that there are empty shelves all over the store. There are very few canned goods left, some of the most essential medications have been cleaned out, and there was nothing left in the long-term storable food section at all. Of course similar things are being reported at major retail stores all across the United States. All of a sudden, fear of COVID-19 has motivated thousands upon thousands of Americans to start prepping like crazy. But most of the population is still not taking this crisis seriously enough. As the number of confirmed cases all over the world continues to rise at an exponential rate, what are the stores going to look like when most of the country finally realizes that they should be prepping for an extended pandemic?

Over the past several days, this coronavirus outbreak has escalated significantly.

From Saturday to Sunday, the number of confirmed cases in Italy jumped by 50 percent…

Italy reported a 50% increase in coronavirus cases Sunday, as the US further restricted travel and the famed La Scala opera house closed.

Italy’s Civil Protection Authority reported the country now has 1,694 confirmed coronavirus cases, up from 1,128 confirmed cases on Saturday. Thirty-four people have died.

And in Germany, the number of confirmed cases actually doubled in just 24 hours.

Here in the United States, confirmed cases are now popping up all over the nation, and we are being warned to brace for a “boom” of confirmed cases…

A “boom” of confirmed cases of the coronavirus that has now killed more than 3,000 people around the world — including two in the U.S. — could already be racing across America despite ramped-up efforts to contain the outbreak, experts say.

The spread of the virus by “community transmissions” is an indication that we could indeed be looking at the tip of the iceberg,” Ogbonnaya Omenka, an assistant professor and public health specialist at Butler University’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, told USA TODAY on Sunday.

Overall, the number of confirmed cases outside of China has more than tripled over the past week. If we continue to see that sort of a growth rate, there will be more than a million confirmed cases outside of China just five weeks from now.

I don’t think that it will happen that quickly, and let us pray that we don’t hit that number at all, but right now this outbreak is starting to spiral out of control.

As fear of this virus rises, grocery stores from coast to coast are stocking up on essential supplies in an effort “to prevent shortages”…

Now grocers are working to prevent shortages and preparing for a spike in demand for disinfectants and long-lasting items such as pasta and canned food. Some are ramping up orders from suppliers.

“This is like a natural disaster, but it’s an illness,” said Doug Baker, vice president of industry relations at FMI, a trade group for food retailers.

In the short-term, hopefully things won’t be too bad.

But without a doubt global supply chains are becoming extremely strained due to the widespread shutdowns inside of China, and that has led one analyst to predict “empty shelves in Target and Walmart as early as April”…

“Literally, empty shelves in Target and Walmart as early as April,” predicts David Iwinski, a local China business consultant who once ran a factory in China.

Most retail stores are likely to have shortages because the coronavirus in China is hampering the manufacture of products shipped to America.

If there are things that you need to go buy, you need to do it now, because thousands upon thousands of Americans are already storming the stores.

In Los Angeles, a local Costco was quickly raided of the most essential supplies when the store opened on Saturday morning…

At a Costco Wholesale market in Los Angeles Saturday morning, a swarm of shoppers loaded up carts with essential items to prepare for a possible period of quarantine.

According to the chain, water, paper towels and Clorox disinfecting wipes were the most in-demand products.

And up in northern California, photos of completely empty shelves over the weekend were rapidly shared on social media…

On social media, residents further north shared shocking photos and videos from Costco centers in San Francisco.

Shelves were depleted of tinned food, while some shoppers climbed up onto shelving in order to reach remaining supplies of rice.

Of course the exact same thing is happening in other states as well.

In Washington, one local resident claimed that “thousands of people” have been descending on the local Costco centers…

I live in the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Washington State. My advice for those elsewhere – go to Costco now. Thousands of people at local stores yesterday – not where you want to be if there is a virus spreading. Glad I went a week ago.

And one video that has been very widely shared shows hundreds of people lined up at a Costco in Brooklyn before it even opened in the morning.

Up to this point, only two people have died from the virus in the United States.

So what will things look like if thousands of people start dying?

Already, there is a worldwide shortage of protective face masks. In fact, things have gotten so bad that Surgeon General Jerome Adams posted a tweet demanding that people stop buying them…

The surgeon general has a message for people who want to run out and stockpile masks to combat the coronavirus – don’t.

“Seriously people – STOP BUYING MASKS!” Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”

Personally, I don’t understand his logic. If the masks are not effective, then why do healthcare providers need them?

Yes, the masks have limited effectiveness against a virus that is so easy to catch. But at least they are better than nothing.

The time of “the perfect storm” is here, and this virus has the potential to greatly accelerate our problems.

We still don’t know if this will be the great global pandemic that so many have warned about, but Bill Gates certainly seems to believe that this may be the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about”…

Billionaire and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said the coronavirus that has killed at least 2,859 people and infected more than 83,700 globally may be the “once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”

“I hope it’s not that bad, but we should assume it will be until we know otherwise,” Gates wrote in an article published Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Personally, I am still hoping that this outbreak will start to subside once warmer weather arrives.

But so far nothing is slowing this virus down. As I mentioned above, the total number of cases outside of China has more than tripled over the last seven days, and that is a huge red flag.

If you need to get to the store, do it now. Because at the rate that people are raiding the stores, there could soon be shortages of some of the most important supplies.

Confirmed Cases Of COVID-19 Are Starting To Pop Up Literally All Across The United States

Over the past few days, local officials have been announcing newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 all over the country. For a while, it had been hoped that by isolating ourselves from China we could prevent a widespread outbreak from happening inside the United States. Unfortunately, this virus is now spreading like wildfire all over the globe, and even the CDC is admitting that “this might be bad”. We still don’t know if this is going to evolve into a horrifying global pandemic that will kill millions of people, but it is undeniable that this crisis has significantly escalated over the last three days. All across America people are really starting to freak out, and it appears that the worst is yet to come.

In this article, I would like to summarize some of the most notable confirmed cases that have just been announced. As you can see, things are really starting to get crazy out there…

Washington State

Six new cases have been confirmed at a nursing facility in Kirkland, and “many more residents” of that nursing home have been complaining of illness…

As the coronavirus continued its march across the globe on Sunday, there were troubling new signs that it was spreading undetected in some American communities for weeks while the government resisted calls for more widespread testing.

With testing now ramping up, the Seattle suburb of Kirkland has become an epicenter of both illness and fear, much of it focused on a nursing facility where six coronavirus cases have been confirmed and many more residents and employees have complained of illness.

Over the weekend, the first two U.S. deaths from the coronavirus also happened in the state of Washington…

King County officials said the man was in his 70s and had underlying health conditions. He died at EvergreenHealth Medical Center, where the first person also died.

On Saturday, it was announced a man in his 50s from the Seattle area, who also had underlying health conditions, had died from the illness.

It appears that there is a full blown outbreak taking place in King County, and that is extremely alarming because the county’s total population is over two million.

And according to a brand new study that was just released, it also appears that “the virus may have been spreading there for weeks”…

There was worse news: researchers who studied two cases in the state say that the virus may have been spreading there for weeks, suggesting the possibility that up to 1,500 people in the state may have been infected. Specifically, the researchers compared two cases to learn more about how the coronavirus spreads. The viral mutations suggest that it has been spreading in the state for close to six weeks, according to one of the scientists who compared the sequences, Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the University of Washington.

If that is true, it could mean that 150 to 1,500 people “have either been infected and recovered or currently are infected now,” said Mike Famulare, a researcher at the Institute for Disease Modeling in Bellevue, Wash., who performed the analysis. Those cases, if they exist, have thus far been undetected.

New York

There have been rumors about COVID-19 in New York for some time now, but over the weekend a woman that recently traveled to Iran became the first officially confirmed case…

NEW York has confirmed its first case of the deadly coronavirus — the same day a second man died in Washington state from the illness.

A woman in her late 30s who had traveled to Iran was diagnosed with the virus, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office.

The fact that she was recently in Iran is especially alarming, because the death rate in Iran has been higher than anywhere else in the world. This has led some to speculate that the Iranian strain of the virus may be more deadly, but this has not been confirmed at this point.

Rhode Island

Two individuals that recently traveled to Italy are believed to be the first confirmed cases in the smallest state in the country…

The Rhode Island Department of Health announced the state’s first “presumptive positive” cases, a man in his 40s and a teenage girl who traveled to Italy in mid-February, the department said.

Florida

With the number of tourists coming in and out of Florida, it was probably inevitable that the coronavirus would spread to that state fairly quickly, and over the weekend we learned that there are now two confirmed cases…

Two people in Florida have tested positive for the coronavirus, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Sunday night, the first two cases of the virus in the state.

The two patients are from Hillsborough and Manatee counties, according to the governor, who directed Surgeon General Scott Rivkees. to declare a public health emergency.

Oregon

Many of the victims that are now becoming “confirmed cases” have actually been exhibiting symptoms for quite some time.

In fact, the newly confirmed case in Oregon has been exhibiting symptoms since February 19th…

Oregon Health Authority has confirmed Oregon’s first, presumptive case of novel coronavirus, COVID-19, public health officials announced today.

The case, an adult resident of Washington County, experienced symptoms of COVID-19 beginning Feb. 19, and a sample was collected from the individual today. The sample was sent to the Oregon State Public Health Laboratory in Hillsboro, which used the new COVID-19 test kit it received Wednesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The lab tested the sample today—only hours after it validated the new CDC test kit.

Illinois

A new case has been confirmed in Illinois, but at this point local officials are not releasing much information…

The new Illinois patient also received “presumptive positive” test results. Officials did not disclose how this patient became infected by the virus. They are now trying to identify and monitor anyone who might have had close contact with the patient.

Texas

This new case in Texas is very interesting.

Originally this particular individual tested negative and was released.

But after mixing with the general population, this patient has now tested positive…

The CDC has mistakenly released a patient from the Texas Center for Infectious Disease whose test later came back positive for COVID-19, says San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

The patient was part of the group that came back from Wuhan, China over two weeks ago via a State Department chartered flight. According to the CDC, the patient was asymptomatic and had met all of the CDC’s criteria for release.

As you can see, confirmed cases are now starting to come in fast and furious from all over the country.

And this is happening even though the CDC has greatly restricted the number of people being tested for the virus. The following piece of commentary about a particularly disturbing case in California comes from Ben Hunt…

The facts here are pretty clear. Patient comes in from another hospital on Wednesday, Feb. 19 – this is one week ago – already intubated and on a ventilator, and the doctors at UC Davis – who have treated other COVID-19 cases – IMMEDIATELY suspect COVID-19.

But the CDC refuses to test for COVID-19.

Why? Because it didn’t fit their “criteria” for testing. They didn’t know for sure that the patient was in mainland China within the past 14 days, and they didn’t know for sure that the patient was in close contact with another confirmed case, so BY DEFINITION this patient can’t possibly have COVID-19. No test for you!

U.S. officials are now promising a “radical expansion” in testing in the coming days, and that is certainly a positive development.

But at this point the cat is already out of the bag, and all efforts to contain the virus have failed.

The months ahead look like they are going to be extremely challenging, and this outbreak is likely to cause an enormous amount of fear.

We have never faced anything like this before, and so nobody is sure exactly what is going to happen next.

But what we do know is that the numbers continue to rise at an exponential rate all over the world, and a lot of people are dying. I am encouraging everyone to prepare for an extended pandemic, because it certainly appears that this virus is going to be with us for a long time to come.

We Are Being Warned That The Coronavirus Could Cause “Shortages” And “Empty Shelves” Here In The United States

We have already seen it happen all over the globe. In China it is becoming increasingly difficult for ordinary citizens to get essential supplies, there have been very long lines to buy face masks in Hong Kong and elsewhere, and in Italy crazed residents have stripped store shelves empty of pasta and other staples in recent days. As the number of confirmed cases continues to rise at a very frightening pace, the “panic buying” that we have been witnessing is going to get even worse. Meanwhile, global supply chains are becoming increasingly strained due to this coronavirus outbreak, and it has already become quite difficult for many stores to get certain things for their customers.

Here in the United States, we have never experienced anything like this. We are accustomed to stores that are absolutely teeming with products, and any “shortages” are usually very temporary.

But now we are being warned to expect empty store shelves in the months ahead if this outbreak becomes a worldwide pandemic…

Coronavirus has the potential to become a global pandemic, temporarily emptying retail store shelves in the coming months and depressing some consumer-facing businesses, experts say, with government officials advising families to take measured steps to stock up on certain essentials.

In fact, NBC News is reporting that we should anticipate seeing “bare shelves” in some stores “by mid-April”…

If production isn’t restarted soon, the bottlenecks could lead to some bare shelves at brick-and-mortar retailers by mid-April, with stores such as Target and Walmart at the greatest risk, Kelly wrote.

Supply chain disruptions and shortages have the potential to hit retailers such as Best Buy, Michaels and Wayfair in the near future, considering that 60 percent to 70 percent of their inventory comes from China.

That doesn’t sound good at all.

Protective face masks are one of the items that is most in demand right now. When my wife went to our local Home Depot the other day, there were barely any left at all. Apparently “hoarding” of masks is taking place on a global scale, and manufacturers are warning that they won’t be able to keep up with demand. The following comes from the Wall Street Journal…

Hospitals and public-health officials in the U.S. and Europe are rationing medical masks and scrounging for more, as they prepare for a potential widening of the coronavirus epidemic.

Global hoarding has left European wholesalers with empty shelves. Manufacturers outside China say they won’t be able to fill an exploding stack of orders for months. U.S. hospitals and medical-supply companies have reported dwindling mask inventory and partial or delayed shipments as the surge in global demand for protective equipment enters a second month.

All over the western world, supplies of face masks are rapidly dwindling. When one reporter searched around London for a mask, she could only find one pharmacy that still had any for sale…

Meanwhile, pharmacies from Germany to Canada to Italy and the U.K. are all low on medical mask supplies, according to posts circulating on social media.

In a post on Twitter, a journalist for Agence France-Presse said that the only pharmacy in central London she could find stocking face masks was selling them for approximately $3.25 a piece.

Of course masks aren’t the only thing that people are “panic buying” right now.

In Hawaii, a wide range of essential supplies have been “flying off the shelves”…

Supplies were flying off the shelves Wednesday, with some shoppers taking pictures of empty shelves at stores across Oahu. This comes after a message from the Health Department to stock up on necessities. There aren’t any coronavirus (COVID-19) cases here in Hawaii, but health officials want people to have food, supplies and medicine just in case.

And after a very long downturn, all of a sudden emergency food has become a very hot commodity again.

In fact, it appears that Costco is currently tapped out…

Costco Wholesale, which is one of America’s biggest suppliers of long-term storable food, sold out of all their “emergency food kits” on their website after the CDC warned that Americans should be prepared in case the coronavirus becomes a pandemic.

Visitors to the “Emergency [Food] Kits & Supplies” section of their website are currently greeted with a message saying, “We’re sorry, no products were found.”

Keep in mind that all of this is happening even though we haven’t seen one single American die from this virus yet.

So if things are already this crazy, what is it going to be like if thousands of Americans start dropping dead during this outbreak?

On Amazon, one of the biggest issues has been price gouging. In fact, “tens of thousands of offers” have been removed in recent days because of “unfair prices”…

Amazon told CNBC it has blocked or removed more than 1 million products that made suspect or misleading claims about the coronavirus. The company said it also suspended or took down tens of thousands of offers from third-party merchants it accused of charging customers unfair prices. Amazon didn’t give specific figures for how many listings it removed or suspended for price gouging.

“There is no place for price gouging on Amazon,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. The spokesperson pointed to Amazon’s “long-standing” policy on fair pricing, which states that the company doesn’t allow pricing practices that harm consumer trust, such as setting a price on a product that is “significantly higher than recent prices on or off Amazon.”

But what is an “unfair price” in this environment?

A free enterprise system is supposed to dynamically respond to changes in supply and demand, and right now our economic environment is shifting very rapidly.

In the coming months, economic conditions will continue to evolve quickly, and that will especially be true if manufacturers in China cannot resume normal activity.

Many Americans don’t realize this, but we are extremely dependent on imports from China, and that is especially true when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs…

The U.S. relies on China for electronics, clothes, toys and, increasingly, prescription drugs. About 90% of the active ingredients used by U.S. companies in drug manufacturing come from China, which has prompted politicians and public health experts to express concern over potential shortages of common generics.

We should have never allowed so much drug manufacturing to move over to China, and now we may end up paying a very great price for doing so.

Even though I hope that the Trump administration is 100 percent correct and that this outbreak will start to subside once warmer weather arrives, I am still encouraging everyone that I know to prepare for a long-term pandemic.

I have been listening very carefully to what medical experts all over the globe have been telling us, and I have found their arguments to be quite persuasive.

The CDC is “asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad”, and I plan to heed that advice.

And if you do prepare and this outbreak is not as bad as initially feared, at least you will be prepared for the next great challenge that is ahead of us.

We Are Watching The Stock Market Do Things That It Has Never Done Before

Stock prices are falling faster and harder than they ever have before. If the financial markets are in this much chaos even though not a single American has died from the coronavirus yet, what are things going to look like if this outbreak starts sweeping across America like wildfire? The number of confirmed cases continues to explode all over the world, and the discovery of a case of “unknown origin” in northern California has really shaken up global financial markets. It has become clear that efforts to contain this virus have failed, and investors are now coming to grips with the fact that this crisis is just getting started. We haven’t seen this much panic on Wall Street in a very long time, and on Thursday we actually witnessed the largest single day point decline in all of U.S. history…

Rising anxiety over the global coronavirus outbreak pushed the stock market into a new zone of fear Thursday.

After falling sharply all week, the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 1,190.95 points to close at 25,766.64 – its worst one-day point drop in history.

Overall, this is turning out to be an absolutely disastrous week for stocks.

The Dow fell more than 1,000 points on Monday, it fell another 879 points on Tuesday, and stock prices continued to drop on Wednesday.

But hardly anyone expected a brand new all-time record to be set on Thursday, and now we will wait to see what happens on Friday.

Incredibly, the S&P 500 has already plunged into correction territory. It only took six trading sessions for that to happen, and that is also a brand new record…

Six days. That’s all the time it took for the S&P 500 to fall more than 10% from a record into a correction.

That’s the quickest turnaround of the sort ever, according to data from Deutsche Bank Global Research.

We have never seen anything like this, and many are now wondering what is going to happen if this outbreak gets much, much worse.

Without a doubt, stocks could potentially fall a long, long way. Thanks to a tremendous rally earlier this year, stock prices were pushed to the most overvalued levels that we have ever seen. It was inevitable that prices would fall, and this coronavirus outbreak looks like it could greatly accelerate that process.

Meanwhile, analysts are increasingly coming to the realization that this virus is going to have very serious implications for the entire global economy.

For example, on Thursday David Kostin of Goldman Sachs warned that American companies “will generate no earnings growth in 2020”…

“US companies will generate no earnings growth in 2020,” Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist, David Kostin, said in a note to clients Thursday. “We have updated our earnings model to incorporate the likelihood that the virus becomes widespread.”

And Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd is even more pessimistic…

Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd says the coronavirus crisis is possibly the worst thing he’s ever seen in his career: “This has the potential to reel into something extremely serious”

This virus is spreading great fear all over the planet, and it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the world economy to function normally when people are afraid to even leave their own homes.

At this point, the travel industry is being hit particularly hard…

“We don’t even need to wait for economic data to see how badly the economy is being hit. You can tell that the sales of airlines and hotels are already falling by a half or something like that,” said Tomoaki Shishido, senior economist at Nomura Securities.

Up until recently, Wall Street had been acting as if this was a temporary problem that would soon fade.

But now it has become clear that we will be battling this virus for many months to come.

And what happens if this crisis is like the Spanish Flu pandemic which lasted for three years?

By the way, tens of millions of people died during the Spanish Flu pandemic. Let us pray that the death toll will not be anything like that this time around.

Unfortunately, with each passing hour this virus makes even more headlines. The Vice-President of Iran has become a confirmed case, and the Iranian Ambassador to the Vatican has actually died after catching the virus.

Speaking of the Vatican, the Pope just cancelled a service “after he was struck down with illness”…

Pope Francis cancelled a church service today after he was struck down with illness.

The 83-year-year-old pontiff was not well enough to attend the mass, although there is no suggestion at this stage he has coronavirus as the outbreak in Italy topped 500 cases.

I should be clear that so far there is absolutely no indication that Pope Francis has been infected by the coronavirus.

But hopefully he is getting tested for it.

In Italy this virus is now officially completely out of control. On Thursday, we learned that it has now spread to ten different regions…

Ten of Italy’s twenty regions are infected with coronavirus as of Wednesday, with Lombardy and Veneto the two most heavily affected regions in the nation.

So far, 400 people have been confirmed to be infected with the virus, which has resulted in 12 deaths as of Wednesday, according to a report by La Repubblica.

Many communities are already in a near total state of shutdown, but that has not stopped the virus from spreading.

Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases in France actually doubled in just 24 hours…

The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in France has more than doubled in 24 hours, the French Health minister said on Thursday, with the tally now at 38 from 18 on Wednesday.

During a press conference, Olivier Veran said this “sharp increase” was due to the identification of so-called “contact persons” linked to previously known cases, adding France was “ready” for an epidemic.

In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this.

And if the number of cases continues to rise at an exponential rate it is going to be absolutely devastating for the world economy and for global financial markets.

For a long time many have been watching for the “trigger event” that would burst the biggest financial bubble in the history of the planet.

That “trigger event” appears to have arrived, and nothing is ever going to be the same from this point forward.

Really Big News About The Coronavirus In The United States Just Dropped

The CDC has announced that there is a newly confirmed coronavirus case in northern California, and authorities have no idea how the victim was exposed to the virus. This particular individual had not traveled to a foreign country lately and also had not had any contact with a known infected patient. In other words, it appears that this individual was infected by someone that the CDC does not know about yet. As soon as this news dropped, financial markets started freaking out and there was an explosion of speculation on social media. Have the efforts to contain the coronavirus in the United States failed? And if people are going this crazy even though not a single American has died from this virus yet, what is going to happen if people start dropping dead in the streets?

The global tipping point we have been waiting for has now arrived. The number of new coronavirus cases outside of China is now surpassing the number of new coronavirus cases being reported inside China each day, and this virus continues to pop up in even more countries. On Wednesday alone, Norway, Greece, Romania, North Macedonia, Pakistan and Brazil all reported their very first cases. In fact, the case in Brazil was the very first to be reported in all of South America.

But most Americans don’t care too much about what is going on in the rest of the world. What they do care about is what is happening within our own borders, and a lot of people are extremely concerned that there is now a confirmed case of “unknown” origin in northern California…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday confirmed an infection in California that would represent the first U.S. person to contract the virus despite not visiting a foreign country recently or coming in contact with an infected patient.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown,” the CDC said in a statement. “It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States. Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

This announcement came just one day after Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the CDC warned that the U.S. should get prepared for a widespread outbreak of this virus…

Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Tuesday the agency expects a sustained transmission of the virus and called for businesses, schools and communities to brace themselves and plan for potential outbreaks.

Also on Tuesday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency even though there were no publicly confirmed cases in San Francisco at the time…

“Although there are still zero confirmed cases in San Francisco residents, the global picture is changing rapidly, and we need to step up preparedness,” Breed said. “We see the virus spreading in new parts of the world every day, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect San Franciscans from harm.”

Is it possible that they already knew about this case of “unknown” origin in northern California on Tuesday?

And could it be possible that there are already many more cases that have not been publicly announced yet?

I understand that one of their top priorities is to keep the public calm, but the American people deserve to know if they are at risk of potentially catching a very deadly virus.

We have already seen how rapidly this virus can spread. A week ago, there were hardly any confirmed cases in South Korea, and now there are 1,595.

In Italy, the number of confirmed cases has now risen above 400, and approximately 100,000 Italians have essentially been placed under quarantine…

Italy now has 400 cases — the largest outbreak outside Asia. And the virus is spreading across Europe, with several countries reporting their first cases, including Norway, Romania, Georgia, and North Macedonia. Many European countries are now implementing emergency measures, with Italy effectively placing 100,000 under quarantine with travel restrictions.

But as this virus continues to spread all over the planet, what are we going to do to try to contain it?

After all, we can’t exactly quarantine the entire world.

On Wednesday, President Trump continued to insist that this coronavirus outbreak is “under control”…

Trump has repeatedly downplayed the coronavirus threat, saying it was “under control.”

“The people are getting better. They’re all getting better,” Trump said Tuesday. “I think that whole situation will start working out. A lot of talent, a lot of brainpower is being put behind it.”

Hopefully his very optimistic assessment is 100 percent correct.

Hopefully this outbreak will start to fade when warmer weather arrives, and hopefully we won’t even be talking about it by the time the election rolls around in November.

But a number of experts are insisting that we truly are facing a worst case scenario. For example, one Harvard epidemiologist is projecting that “40 to 70 percent” of the entire population of the world will get the virus…

But here’s one forecast that caught our eyes from The Atlantic. It is titled, “You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus.” That piece quotes extensively a Harvard epidemiologist. The article describes him as a cautious professional, the kind of person who carefully considers every word and then backs it with data.

What the professor told the magazine is this: “I think the likely outcome is the coronavirus will ultimately not be containable.” He went on to predict that in the next year 40 to 70 percent of the people on Earth will be infected with coronavirus.

If his projection is accurate, tens of millions will die.

So let us hope that he is dead wrong.

And Zero Hedge has just reported on a brand new study that was just released that has discovered that this coronavirus has “an ‘HIV-like mutation’ which allows it to bind with human cells up to 1,000 times stronger than the Sars virus”…

While mainstream scientists continue to perform mental gymnastics to insist that the new coronavirus wasn’t man-made, new research from scientists in China and Europe reveal that the disease happens to have an ‘HIV-like mutation’ which allows it to bind with human cells up to 1,000 times stronger than the Sars virus, according to SCMP.

Recall that at the end of January, a team of Indian scientists wrote in a now-retracted, scandalous paper claiming that the coronavirus may have been genetically engineered to incorporate parts of the HIV genome, writing “This uncanny similarity of novel inserts in the 2019- nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature,” meaning – it was unlikely to have occurred naturally.

Fast forward to new research by a team from Nankai University, which writes that COV-19 has an ‘HIV-like mutation’ that allows it to quickly enter the human body by binding with a receptor called ACE2 on a cell membrane.

If this information is accurate, that would help to explain why this virus spreads at lightning speed once it hits a particular area.

At this moment, you might not have any confirmed cases in your area.

But by this time next week you could potentially have a thousand people walking around with the virus in your community.

So use the time that you have now to make preparations, because in the not too distant future you might be avoiding going out in public as much as possible.

Ominous Warnings About The Very Rapid Spread Of The Coronavirus

Is a widespread coronavirus outbreak inside the United States inevitable? After weeks of generally optimistic statements, officials are now warning us to prepare for the worst. Over the past several days we have seen the number of confirmed cases outside of China escalate dramatically, and this has really rattled global financial markets. After being down more than 1,000 points on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 879 points on Tuesday. U.S. stocks have lost more than 1.7 trillion dollars in value in just two days. Much more importantly, a wave of tremendous panic is starting to sweep across America, and it looks like this crisis is just getting started.

Usually officials at the CDC choose their words very carefully so that they do not needlessly alarm the public. With that in mind, I would like for you to consider three statements that the CDC’s Dr. Nancy Messonnier made about a potential outbreak inside the United States during a press conference on Tuesday…

#1 “It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country anymore but a question of when this will happen.”

#2 “Disruption to everyday life may be severe.”

#3 “We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.”

Can you ever recall a top CDC official ever making statements this ominous?

I certainly can’t.

In addition, Messonnier warned that it may soon become necessary for schools and businesses to greatly restrict person to person contact…

The CDC outlined what schools and businesses will likely need to do if the COVID-19 virus becomes an epidemic outbreak in the U.S. Schools should consider dividing students into smaller groups or close and use “internet-based tele-schooling,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on a conference call. “For adults, businesses can replace in-person meetings with video or telephone conferences and increase teleworking options,” Messonnier said.

On a temporary basis such measures would not be too disruptive, but what if this virus just keeps spreading month after month?

We are potentially facing a scenario that is truly unprecedented, and it is becoming increasingly clear that officials have lost confidence that they will be able to contain this virus. In fact, one former U.S. official told USA Today that “the horse is out of the barn”…

Dennis Carroll, former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Health Security and Development Unit, credited China’s “extraordinary control measures” with delaying the spread of the virus. But he said avoiding a pandemic is “very unlikely.”

“The dramatic uptick of cases in South Korea, Iran and Italy are reflective of a self-sustaining spreading of the virus,” Carroll, who now leads the Global Virome Project science cooperative, told USA TODAY. “And a clear message that the horse is out of the barn.”

At this point there are still only a few dozen confirmed cases in the United States, but authorities are bracing for the worst. If you can believe it, San Francisco Mayor London Breed just declared a state of emergency because of this virus…

Mayor London Breed declared a local emergency in San Francisco Tuesday amid the coronavirus outbreak, despite there being no confirmed cases among the city’s residents.

“Although there are still zero confirmed cases in San Francisco residents, the global picture is changing rapidly, and we need to step-up preparedness,” Breed said in a statement. “We see the virus spreading in new parts of the world every day, and we are taking the necessary steps to protect San Franciscans from harm.”

And after being quite apathetic about this outbreak at first, people all over America are suddenly realizing that they should be preparing for a potential pandemic.

In fact, Silicon Valley investor Geoff Lewis created quite a stir when he asked for advice on stockpiling food. The following is the question that he posted on Twitter that caused so much of an uproar…

If one were hypothetically stockpiling four months of shelf stable food, what would folks recommend (optimizing for keto friendly)?

We haven’t seen anything like this in the United States in a very long time.

But we haven’t even had a single death from this virus in our country yet. How crazed will people get when victims start dropping dead in the streets like they have been in Wuhan?

There is now talk that the IOC could potentially cancel or postpone the Olympic Games in Tokyo. At one time such talk would have seemed crazy, but this is how serious this outbreak has become.

In Iran, the number of confirmed cases has now jumped to 95, although many people believe that the true number is far, far higher.

During a press conference on Monday, Iran’s deputy health minister attempted to downplay the seriousness of this outbreak, but on Tuesday we learned that he has been infected too…

Iran’s deputy health minister said he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus and is in self-quarantine at his home just a day after he appeared at a news conference in Tehran where he sought to quell fears about the outbreak. Iraj Harirchi, the head of Iran’s counter-coronavirus task force, announced the illness in a video online while vowing that authorities would continue working to control the spread.

Apparently not wanting to be outdone, one of the officials in South Korea that was overseeing the response to this outbreak decided to jump off a bridge…

But in Seoul took on a more morbid tone Tuesday following reports in the local press that a civil servant from the Ministry of Justice’s Emergency Safety Planning Office jumped off a bridge in Seoul at around 5 am local time Tuesday.

The official was one of several individuals charged with overseeing the government’s response to the virus. As cases soar and hysteria mounts, we suspect this news won’t exactly help quiet the public’s nerves.

Suicide is never the answer to anything, and we should all be praying for that man’s family.

In Italy, the number of confirmed cases has grown by more than 15 times since Friday…

Over in Italy, the number of confirmed cases has surpassed 300 to 322, while the number of dead climbed to 10, according to Italian emergency chief Angelo Borrelli, who said the newly deceased were over the age of 80. That’s up from just 20 confirmed cases on Friday.

Newly deceased were over 80 years old, says at press conference in Rome Tuesday. The new infections include three cases in southern Sicily region, Italian Civil Protection official Borrelli said.

All of a sudden, people all over Europe are wanting to avoid Italians because of the potential of catching the virus. In most cases that fear is irrational, but we do know that an Italian just spread the virus to a hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands…

Hundreds of staff and tourists staying at a hotel in Spain’s Canary Islands were put under lockdown on Tuesday, El Pais newspaper reported. One person who had stayed at the establishment was later found to have tested positive for the coronavirus.

I lived in Italy for a few years as a child, and I have a great love for the country.

It is so sad to watch what is happening over there, but the same things are going to start happening here. In fact, Dr. Messonnier has told the public that now is the time “to begin preparing” for a massive outbreak…

“People are concerned about this situation – I would say rightfully so,” Messonnier said. “But we are putting our concerns to work preparing. Now is the time for businesses, hospitals, communities, schools and everyday people to begin preparing as well.”

If you do prepare and all of this turns out to be a false alarm, at least you will be ready for the next crisis that is coming.

But if you don’t do anything to prepare and things get really, really bad, it could end up costing you dearly.

If this virus starts spreading across the United States like wildfire, you and your family will want to minimize contact with the public as much as possible. So stock up on the things you will need now, because when things start getting really crazy the stores will be cleaned out very quickly.

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