Opinion: 5 things to do while you wait out the coronavirus — besides washing your hands
March 18, 2020 by Jonathan Clements
I don’t know when the coronavirus will stop spreading, when we’ll have a vaccine and how much the economy will slow. I also don’t know at what level the stock market SPX, +5.99% and interest rates will hit bottom—or whether we’ve already seen the worst. And nobody else does, either. But that doesn’t mean we should all just sit on our (frequently washed) hands.
While we don’t know how bad things will get, we’ve seen this movie before. Do you remember the panic after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, with folks buying gas masks, duct tape to seal windows, bottled water and canned goods, and families planning where they’d rendezvous if they couldn’t return to their homes? Do you remember how people hoarded cash in late 2008, because they weren’t sure the banks would reopen, and how many thought we’d see a repeat of the Great Depression of the 1930s?
