And yet, like almost every other time this has happened for the last 4-5 years there will be an almost complete recovery the next day. At least 600 points back into the green.
I don't think this is like any other recent experience in the market. The fundamentals are just different with this event. It's not a case of investors being purely jittery, it's actual disruptions to personnel, production, distribution, supply, and demand. Real, practical problems facing the business sector on the ground level.
Of course these fundamental issues are exacerbated by the uncertainty over the depth of the problems, so the downturn should logically stabilize into a reflection of actual practical impacts after a better idea on the complete impacts are possible.
As yet, the way this virus is spreading seems extremely difficult to contain. More like something that will have to burn through populations until they've either recovered or not. At that point all we can do is hope the case fatality rate is as low as possible, and above all, no devastating mutations. The infections in Iran seem to be notably more deadly, we've seen deaths of young, obstensibly healthy individuals such as the 25yo nurse, and widespread affects on the hospitals and government institutions. This wasn't seen in Korea or Japan previously.
I think the various governments inability to consistently tell the truth about the situation and what know and don't know is making the situation worse both in care and management of the virus. And the uncertainty over the entire thing is just making everything worse. A true rebound will not be possible until sound understandings are made of how far this is going, how severe the impacts on core business numbers, and what the government and health care infrastructure plans are to deal with the challenges that COVID-19 represents. Too much uncertainty until then.
A more virulent strain ripping through large regions at 10%+ CFR could potentially see utterly devastating financial results. Otoh a slow and manageable .5%ish CFR may be something that could be kept to a simple single-year downturn. It's just too early to tell.