Over the last few weeks, there's been a pretty concrete way to track the global fear around

COVID-19, that new coronavirus that's been spreading around the world.

You can do it by just looking at the Dow Jones industrial average.

It's been headed in basically one direction since the middle of last month, down.

Right, right.

And this was sort of the first stage of fear over what the novel coronavirus, I should

say, COVID-19 would do to the economy.

Jordan Weissman covers economics here at Slate.

You said first stage.

Yeah.

I'm at a new stage now.

Oh, yeah, we're definitely at a new stage.

Yesterday, this new stage meant Wall Street's worst plunge in more than a decade.

People first were worried that they wouldn't be able to get their stuff from factories in

China.

Now people are really worried about what's happening here in the US, what's going to happen.

For instance, the airline industry is already getting walloped.

You know, you're seeing Southwest say we're going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars

this quarter because people aren't flying.

But you can see how it spreads.

Where it's like first there's fewer flights, then there's fewer people in the airport,

and then like Auntie Anne's needs fewer people making pretzels.

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