#78 Balaji Srinivasan: Exploring Covid-19

Wuhan was a normal city on December 1st of last year, and by January 23rd, all 7 hospitals were filled, people were being sent home to die, and the entire city was put under quarantine—the largest quarantine in human history began. That was NOT a bad flu season.

This [COVID-19] could be as much as an accelerant for biomedicine as the internet was for software.

The absolute number of hospitalizations and deaths when COVID-19 hits an area is very high. Even if there are lots of mild cases, the N is so large that it overwhelms the medical system.

~89% of individuals infected with COVID-19 exhibit fevers—it’s the most characteristic symptom.

This [COVID-19] is going to be a gigantic shot in the arm for every diagnostic and medical imaging company. All of those are about to get defense budget-level spending. Think of this as a world war in its scope, but it's a world war against a virus.

I think COVID-19 will definitely cause at least a recession, but likely something more severe than that.