Let’s see...After over-hyped crisis fear mongering over and over again my entire life - it is insane to have the perception there is nothing to worry about.
I could probably sit down and come up with 50 things in my lifetime that were the beginning of the end, that turned into nothing.
Yet you think it is insane to have judgment based on experience in life?
“Yet you think it is insane to have judgment based on experience in life?”
I agree about false panics - to a point.
We all can choose when to start worrying about this one, but having a cruise ship on lock-down in Tokyo Harbor because one person carried the virus on, and now 20 of 70 people tested positive there (with the other 3700 people not even tested), is enough for me to start taking preparation steps.
This time it’ll be different! (Said every professor and/or politician advocating communism)
The disease continues to spread, though. If we get enough food, paper items and other necessities to last a couple of months, we won’t all be meeting at the stores in a rush at the same time and infecting each other as much. Stocking up now will also give the retailers a heads-up and time to get more freight.
If the epidemic doesn’t move in on us, we’ll still be alright. We can spend some time around home, get outdoors and get some exercise for a change.
You got me thinking too about the false panics. I did prep for Y2k, false alarm. I always heard about how the CFR and “The FED” are going to conspire to put me in slavery...still waiting for the chains and whippings.
But I also remember a case where I was in an absolute panic, but everyone (virtually everyone) else said that I was nuts, and that was the 2 years leading up to mortgage meltdown. For that, I had gotten out of the stock market, and actually shorted financial stocks (including Countrywide, which I rode right to the bottom), so I made enough to buy a nice car in 2008, while others went broke and often lost their homes.
The reason for my panic then (but not prior, Y2k was just some elevated concern) was not because of what people saying - as they were saying just the opposite: “nothing to worry about, Bob”. It was because I was pulling mortgage loan paper off the Internet for Naples, Florida, and it was showed Exploding Loan after Exploding Loan (Option ARMs, they called them,...interest rate would nearly triple at the 5-year mark, but people were being qualified at the low, teaser, rate). I saw the data, made my call independently (these could NEVER be paid back per their terms), and I was right (that time). For other things, like the FED/CFR ‘conspiracy’, nothing ever made sense, so I ignored it. At this point, other than Coronavirus, I still believe a day of reckoning will come because of our deficit/debt, but who knows when?