Covid-19, Day 74

Last night Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office. Today's news has the DOW taking it's worst one-day loss since "Black Monday" of 1987. Quoting Reuters end of market day summary:

The S&P 500 Energy index .SPNY lost 12.3%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 2,352.6 points, or 9.99%, to 21,200.62, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 260.74 points, or 9.51%, to 2,480.64 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 750.25 points, or 9.43%, to 7,201.80.

Basically the markets hated Trump's plan to bar Europeans from entering. It is, after all, not the way to address the disease as it currently exists in the US. Congress is trying to pass a stimulus package but the paid sick leave portion is causing Republicans to balk, so no bright hope there to help calm the markets.

Also in today's news: NBA ending the season early; hockey and baseball seasons look cancelled; New York is banning congregations of over 500 people, so all of Broadway will be shut down; Disneyland announced it will be closing starting Saturday. The local school district has cancelled school until after spring break (three weeks).

I don't have handy the known cases and known death figures world wide, (UPDATE: see next paragraph) but Italy alone has had over 15,000 known cases and 1016 deaths. Italy being the country with the most deaths outside of China. Generally the medical advice has been to do everything to slow the progress of the disease under the hope that even if N people get sick, with N being 10% or more of the population in total, the number at any one time will not exceed the capacity of hospitals. Hence closures of things that bring people together, like sports and theatre.

Today's numbers, from an updated 3pm ET daily article at Ars Technica: over 127,800 confirmed cases world-wide with over 4,700 deaths. In the US, 1,300 confirmed cases (but lack of testing means that's surely an undercount) and 38 confirmed deaths (similarly undercounted); only five states have no known cases.

As of yesterday, though, IOCCC was still optimistic for Tokyo 2020 this summer. I am not optimistic international travel will be comfortable for most people by then.