The novel coronavirus has come to Southern California. This week, Los Angeles County and other counties have declared public health emergencies, so have several cities. That means they can all work together. Public health laboratories have increased their capacity for testing and officials are warning us all not to underestimate the possible danger.

There will be regular radio updates and guidelines, some of which are already familiar.

Wash your hands, try not to touch your face, and don't hug, ask, how you doing?

In a moment, we'll talk with a longtime advisor to the World Health Organization about what is known and what is not known about the COVID-19 pandemic.

First, the economy.

Mark Zandi is chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

Always good to have you with us.

Thank you, Warren.

How vulnerable is the economy?

It's vulnerable.

If the virus spreads as the CDC is anticipating, they'll be highly

disruptive. We'll get some schools closings, child care centers, businesses in different communities

across the country. And if China is a case study, probably is a pretty good one, that's going to be

quite disruptive to the

economy. So the economy is going to struggle here through the first half of the year. How's

Wall Street doing? Well, Wall Street's trying to digest it all. They took a big step down last week,

as I think investors marked up their expectations that the economy is going to have a problem,

perhaps even a recession.

I don't think investors have fully discounted a recession, though, not quite yet.

They're not there yet.

I think they're going to wait and see exactly how this virus spreads and, you know,

what kind of damage it does.

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