It does not help that numerous psychologists are telling us 'don't let coronavirus tip society into panic'. As a sociologist with a professional interest in how fear works I can confirm that nobody decides to panic.

People panic when the messages communicated to them incite them to be afraid of fear itself. Unfortunately, the message that we frequently encounter is one that makes me feel like I am in the middle of a very, very slow but very long Hollywood disaster movie.

In recent weeks the West European media has become obsessed with worst case scenarios. It is as if they are overcome by a disturbing malaise of disaster pornography and love exposing their listeners to speculative forecasts about the millions that could die if the coronavirus turns out more prevalent and more deadly than we now imagine.

Austria is imposing a blanket ban on all people entering from Italy unless they have a medical certificate, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has proclaimed, though Austrians currently in Italy are strongly encouraged to return.

"There will be an entry ban for people [travelling] from Italy to Austria, with people who have a medical certificate being an exception," Kurz said on Tuesday, as cited by local media.

Meanwhile, Austrians who find themselves in Italy will be allowed to return, but "they must be kept in isolation for two weeks."

A Muslim lawyer who wears a head scarf has put aside her aspiration to become a public prosecutor.

A Sikh teacher with a turban moved about 2,800 miles from Quebec to Vancouver, calling herself a "refugee in her own country."

And an Orthodox Jewish teacher who wears a head kerchief is worried that she could be blocked from a promotion.

Since the Quebec government in June banned schoolteachers, police officers, prosecutors and other public sector employees from wearing religious symbols while at work, people like these three women have been grappling with the consequences.

Three have people died and 44 got injured in Sunday's civil unrest in Iraq's capital of Baghdad, Fadhil Gharawi, a member of the Iraqi High Commission For Human Rights' Board of Commissioners, said on Monday.

"Three people died, 44 were injured in clashes that took place yesterday, on Sunday, at Khilani Square, in the center of Baghdad," Gharawi said in a statement, according to Al-Sumaria TV channel.

On Sunday, protests took place in Baghdad to commemorate the International Women's Day.

The protests in Iraq have been ongoing since October 2019, with the participants demanding an end to corruption and an improvement to the quality of life in the country.

We've had a couple of people BTL take issue with us regarding the case fatality rate (CFR) of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Citing Wikipedia and the CDC we gave that rate as being between 10-20%. A couple of commenters, however, insisted the actual CFR was 2-3%, and this led us to look further.

What we found was quite interesting.

This is the pre-February 22 2020 opening paragraph of the 'Mortality' section on the Wiki page for the Spanish flu (our emphasis):

The global mortality rate from the 1918-1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died (case-fatality ratio). About a third of the world population was infected, and 3% to 6% of the entire global population of over 1800 million[51] died.[2]

The drop in oil prices is likely to be short-lived, veteran stock broker Peter Schiff told RT, since the deflation of the whole US debt bubble and crash of the dollar will make the prices of oil and other commodities bounce up.

Decline in demand for oil due to the coronavirus epidemic, further reinforced by the demise of the OPEC+ production cuts agreement, has crashed the US and world markets, sending traders into a panic-selling mode. The ongoing market turmoil will certainly hit the oil industry heavily, but the impact is likely to reach far beyond it, CEO and chief global strategist at Euro Pacific Capital Peter Schiff believes.

"A lot of the heavily indebted energy companies are clearly going to go bankrupt and so, ultimately, those that survive will be in a position to make even more money as the price of oil re-bounce, which I do expect to happen," Schiff told RT, adding that well capitalized oil companies will survive the crisis and ultimately benefit from it, once the prices start to pick up.

Police in New Jersey issued a warning on Monday to residents that the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention is not sending health workers to homes to conduct coronavirus "surveillance," a report said.

NJ.com reported that local police departments took to social media to inform the public about the potential safety issue.

Sussex County's government posted a message that if someone claims they're from the CDC, "do not let them into your home" and contact police.

It is not uncommon for the unscrupulous to take advantage of a crisis. It has been widely reported that thieves often target homes during evacuations for flooding or fires. The coronavirus may be no different.

Armed robbers wearing surgical masks made off with over $200,000 in cash at a New York racetrack Saturday night, possibly using the coronavirus as cover. The surgical masks allowed them to blend into the crowd.

With the entirety of Italy put under quarantine, the Mediterranean nation has been seen as the hardest-hit by the coronavirus in Europe. Italian journalist Evgeny Utkin believes, however, that it's just the most tested one.

Utkin, a journalist based in Italy and an expert on economics and politics, told RT he believes the situation with the coronavirus as reported in the press (that it is ravaging Italy, yet somehow affecting neighboring countries on a far smaller scale) does not represent the reality on the ground.

The catch, he said, is that while in some countries the number of those infected might be underreported, in Italy (at least at the beginning of the outbreak) there was an overreaction instead.

"Italy was the first country whose nerves snapped," Utkin said. "They started testing absolutely everyone."

Rigorous testing sent the number of confirmed cases skyrocketing, Utkin believes, with the alarming statistics soon driving panic and making international headlines. Over the past weekend, northern Italy, where the outbreak erupted, was put on lockdown, which was further extended to the whole of the country on Monday.

Without the support of Blacks in the recent Democratic Party primaries, Joe Biden would still be the political failure in U.S. Presidential campaigning that he had always been. As the Republican political pro, Pat Buchanan, wrote of Biden on March 5th, "Before last Saturday, he had not won a single primary in three presidential campaigns." That "last Saturday" referred to the South Carolina primary. Biden's first-ever win of a Presidential primary turned Biden's dead-in-the-water 2020 Presidential campaign into an almost-certain win of the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination. The vast majority of the votes for Biden in the South Carolina primary came from that state's black Democrats, who are the majority of that state's registered Democrats. (Sanders's win of that state's white Democrats was by a smaller margin.) The Democratic National Committee and its 700+ superdelegates and its members of Congress (representing the Party's billionaires, who finance their careers) had been waiting for this moment before they would become more public about their backing of Biden to be their nominee; and so the official endorsements started suddenly then to pour forth, as if Biden already were the Party's nominee. Consequently, going into the March 3rd Super Tuesday primaries in 14 states, the opinion polls, which had, until then, shown Sanders as being likely to win almost all of the states, turned suddenly to show Biden as being likely to win almost all of them — which then did happen.

By as late as February 9th, which was the time by which it became clear that Bernie Sanders had won the most votes in the February 3rd Iowa caucuses, the national polls of Democratic Party voters had shown Joe Biden strongly as #1, with Bernie Sanders a distant #2 nationwide; but, then, promptly after February 9th, the polls showed a huge lead for Sanders as the new #1, and Biden as being around 8% below him and the new #2; but, then, Biden won the South Carolina primary on February 29th, in a landslide and now he is projected by fivethirtyeight dot com as being 88% likely to win the nomination on the first ballot at the Convention, and as being around 10% likely to get the win of the nomination on a second ballot, and Sanders as having the remaining 2% as being his likelihood to become the Democratic Party's nominee.

Asian markets are trading down while European and American futures go into free fall, and gold reached a new seven-year peak, amid a dramatic oil market crash and concerns over the coronavirus-hit global economy.

Japan's Nikkei 225 and Topix were down six percent in morning trading, while the relatively safe-haven Japanese yen soared to a three-year-high against the US dollar.


South Korea's Kopsi dropped nearly three percent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 3.6. In mainland China, both the Shanghai and Shenzhen Composite indices fell more than 1.5 percent.