COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong,
I sincerely appreciate your reluctance to comment without direct knowledge and reliable resources. I do think someone seems to be giving this coronavirus more media attention than normal. I am not sure if this is being hyped for vaccines, politics, or what. I trust you will be honest when you have done your own research.

GM

REPLY: I am concerned that reliable sources have reported that there are mutations already. Our model suggests that 2021/2022 should see a peak in such disease. Either this develops slowly and becomes more of a pandemic at that time, or there is a sequel coming down the road. This one spreads like the flu, which is different than SARS, but there are differences between this and the flu. It is just that everyone wants to always paint the end of the world with every event. I prefer real data. I am waiting for the documented numbers outside of China to compare. Then all the claims of China hiding the real numbers will be verified.

The market was due for a correction. Whatever the fundamentals that the media focuses on is really irrelevant. All I can say is the #1 question coming from outside the USA is clearly the Bernie Effect.

I am refraining from commenting because I want to see the number outside of China. I have spoken to some people who are in the field of genetics and they both disagreed that this is somehow genetically manufactured biological weapon. I do know that such weapons have a kill ratio of over 60%. As I said, we signed a contract to hold a WEC in Shanghai. Legally, they could have held us to it at a cost of about $100,000 penalty if we canceled. They waived that so the damage this has caused to the Chinese economy has been very dramatic. We will not even see those numbers until after the 1st quarter. We have people throughout Asia. They are OK but do report that Hong Kong hotels are empty.

I do not like to speculate for I know how this nonsense can turn into a panic that may not be warranted. Influenza spreads around the world in yearly regular outbreaks. This results in about three to five million cases of severe illness and about 290,000 to 650,000 deaths. About 20% of unvaccinated children and 10% of unvaccinated adults are infected each year.