US stocks plummet on coronavirus fears Dow logs biggest point-drop in history as stocks tumble

The markets are already heading back up today from yesterday's drop.

I agree that panic is among first things we DON'T need right now. One way to lessen (but not eliminate) the panic is for the president of the United States to stop lying. It is common knowledge that Mr Trump lies repeatedly and pathologically - he is the embodiment of the old saw that we can tell when politicians lie by whether their mouths are moving. But now the president is lying about our national security.

Last night's address to the nation contained three false statements of administration policy:

1. He said "...we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.... There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings." False. The travel ban does not apply to American citizens or permanent residents, and the administration later corrected the president in rules that made no mention of "screenings."
2. He said "These prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval. Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing." False. After the speech the president corrected himself and said the restrictions would not apply to trade or cargo.
3. He said, "Earlier this week, I met with the leaders of health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing." False. The insurance industry agreed to wave copayments for virus testing NOT treatments.

The president delivered those significant falsehoods about U.S. policy in a televised Oval Office address to the nation - a televised and scripted address to the nation. I assume the president doesn't really know what U.S. policy is, so I put the blame on the speechwriters (reportedly Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller). If those weren't lies - i.e. knowingly false statements - WHOEVER wrote them demonstrated gross and disqualifying incompetence, and should be fired immediately. We CANNOT have scripted falsehoods put in the president's teleprompter, given all the unscripted falsehoods he already produces when he's not forced to read from a screen.

Today, for example, when YET AGAIN he told us - without teleprompter - that testing is going well (his words: "[T]he testing has been going very smooth," and "We've done a good job on testing.") and that anyone who needs to get tested can get tested. False. False. Every time he says it, false. Almost at the same time Mr Trump was lying from the Oval Office today, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was on Capitol Hill calling our testing apparatus "a system [that] is not really geared to what we need right now," a reality he called "a failing" we should "admit."

When the American people are lied to repeatedly by their president over his first three years in office, and then from him almost daily receive a VERY different status report on our battle against the virus from the report they hear from public health experts, panic is not a surprise. Unwelcome, yes! But not a surprise.

Let's start our battle against panic by demanding that the president and his administration stop lying and start telling us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

You may well disagree, but public health experts say this virus demands our nation's/world's 24/7 attention. In my and many others' view, this is a crisis unlike any we have faced in modern history, a reality that places an ever-greater burden on the president of the United States, who is supposed to lead the nation through crises such as this. Sadly, Mr Trump continues to lie to us about the potential severity of the outbreak and the status of testing apparatus. In my view, those realities - a global pandemic and a lying leader - demand media attention and scrutiny. We need accurate information from health experts and we need to hold our leaders accountable for their lies.

Were Mr Trump and his administration to have been telling us the truth from the beginning of this outbreak, I think we'd be in a very different place today.

Straight up: Are you AT ALL outraged by Mr Trump's falsehoods and lies in this matter?

Speaks the expert on all things....

China has a few days ago reported that 67 000 of more than 80 000 infected have recovered and been released from hospitals, and in recent days only few new infections have come up ...

In Germany reports are thus far 8 deaths (all of older people with previous more or less serious conditions), and some new infections in more local areas ... other reports show that effects after infections are in most cases rather mild with children and young people showing less effects that older people.

Reports also are that doctors and hospitals are overloaded because very many people with even the slightest coughs or colds and what they think could be a symptom now run there and by far most people are sent home to follow normal simple procedures one would follow anyways in case of a regular flu. Only if symptoms in connection with other facts (recent contacts etc.) are at hand, will there even be a test for possible corona infection.

Society is being more and more shut down as politicians' have made decisions to shut down schools, make recommendations or orders to have events and gatherings of more than 50 people, etc. And the mainstream propaganda never reports even one case of a recovered person but makes big news of even one new reported case of infection.

May everyone employ their own brain cells and logic to figure out which information they are given makes sense and most likely is true (no matter what the source !!! ) and which information is meant to mislead them and most likely push some other agenda.