Shortly after Trump said Coronavirus was nothing to worry about and advised investors to buy on the dip (and Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh called the virus nothing more than a common cold that’s being weaponized to hurt Trump), the US government releases a very different perspective (one that’s true, and therefore one that’s likely to get people fired.) “‘It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen,’ said Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. ‘We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.'” Here’s the latest from the NYT.

+ CNBC: The stock market is plunging for a second day. (Turns out the market reacts more to reality than a commander in chief-investment advisor who’s a habitual liar with a history of bankruptcies and a personal stake on the line…) Think your portfolio is at risk. Imagine having invested in pandemic bonds.

+ “Xi would be far from the first authoritarian to have been blindsided. Ironically, for all the talk of the technological side of Chinese authoritarianism, China’s use of technology to ratchet up surveillance and censorship may have made things worse, by making it less likely that Xi would even know what was going on in his own country.” Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic: How the Coronavirus Revealed Authoritarianism’s Fatal Flaw.

+ “Just a day earlier, Harirchi had appeared at a news conference in Tehran saying authorities would bring the virus under control and denied reports from a local lawmaker in Qom, in northern Iran, that 50 people had died in the holy city that draws millions of pilgrims every year.” Buzzfeed: Iran’s Deputy Health Minister Has Tested Positive For Coronavirus. And now, one of the officials who was seated next to him also has the virus. (The health minister was downplaying the threat as he sat there with visible symptoms.)

+ Meanwhile, a US drugmaker has shipped the first experimental Coronavirus vaccine for human tests.