What we can learn from Camus’s “The Plague”
Fair, although I think we need to remember in difficult times like this that:<p>- The plague killed 50-100% of people who got it depending on which kind of plague you got (bubonic, pneumonic or septicemic) whereas while nCoV rates are still TBD we&#x27;re probably looking at an upper bound closer to half a percent, or 3-4 order of magnitude lower.<p>- The average age of folks who&#x27;ve died of nCoV so far in Italy is <i>80</i> and in China the mid-high 70s.<p>- The plague took <i>everyone</i> whereas the young and healthy are effectively going to get a (sometimes very, very) bad cold out of nCoV. The younger they are, the less affected. I think out of the hundreds of thousands of cases we know about so far only a single child has died -- and they had serious medical conditions going in. Currently the CFR in Korea and in the USA for people under 30 is less than 0.1%.<p>Perspective matters. It&#x27;s easy to get swept up in the panic going on right now. Don&#x27;t panic. Do listen to authorities and generally keep away from other folks. This will all be over in a few months. We&#x27;ll mostly all get it, we&#x27;ll overwhelmingly recover, and become immune. Chances are this is going to become one of the endemic viruses that shows up every year from now on.<p>As panic sets in, if you&#x27;ve got some cash to invest in the markets and a long time horizon to draw on it, this may be the money making opportunity of a generation.