I know this is mostly used for politics but I thin the impact of the Coronavirus/Covid-19 deserves some discussion. I'm not sure what the reaction has been in the US but in Europe its spreading like widlfire.
Italy is officially on lockdown as of last night and Serie A (the Italian football league) has been suspended. Games in France are being played behind closed doors. Slovakia has just cancelled all sports events for the next 14 days.
In Ireland we still only have a small number of cases and so far life is normal - but 3 weeks ago Italy had a similar number and yesterday 97 people died there. Our government is starting to react, yesterday they officially cancelled all St. Patricks day festivities. Traditionally every town and village would have a parade. The health service are converting an old hospital into a quarantine center here in my city and are looking for other locations that can be used to treat people, many people are being asked to work from home. and a significant number of health professionals are self isolating here in Cork after a small number of cases showed up in two of our hospitals.
Our Taoiseach yesterday suggested that the worst case scenario is 60% infection, if that stays true for the world then a 2% fatality rate would mean 92.4 MM deaths, higher than the 85MM killed in WWII. Obviously thats very much a worst case scenario, and likely the eventual fatality rate ends up being much lower as many people won't even know they have the infection. But it gives an idea of the scale.
I suspect that in the next 3 weeks most Western countries catch up to where Italy is today and many more countries will go into full quarantine mode as its the only way to stop the spread. I expect all sports to be postponed in the short term, and I think that will lead to massive difficulty for smaller professional teams who cannot afford to pay their players without gate receipts. I think many small businesses will struggle and go bankrupt as people stay at home in order to stay safe
I have seen comments on twitter suggesting that the reaction is overblown, or is being used as a ploy to hurt Trump, but this is a global issue and is not about America/Trump. I don't think Italy going into lockdown has anything to do with politics in the US. Its not about politics at all.