I might take that bet and would lose happily if it is the case. In fact you have a bet!!!!!!!!!!!
I don't want FR to get a rep as a site that bets on death. It isn't in our character to take advantage of a bad situation.
However, my true intent isn't for FR to profit from death but for Deplorables to be rational empiricists who are driven by fact vs fear (most of the time). I think we lose our minds in these situations. But I also am not perfect and, as null says, when The Big One hits, we will probably miss it. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Finally, I WANT to be right, but only because I don't want masses of innocent people dying in a pandemic.
Would it be immoral to set up a sub-FReepathon where people pledge to the site an amount over and above that which they'd pledge otherwise, if the death rate from this thing in China exceeds the US flu annualized death rate of 24 per 100,000 people, by the end of March 2020?
We have a lot of unknowns here as to this virus. Only time is going to tell us how serious it is or isn’t. I generally do not buy into a lot of the hype, but when Xi says there is a problem I think we need to pay close attention.
The barn door can’t be closed now, this virus cannot be contained at this point and with a 10 to 14 day incubation period we will know soon enough where we are on this.
So in the next ten days we have watch carefully to see the fallout and pray.