But those who are infected can wait up to two weeks before showing symptoms and a week or more before ending up in hospital. And yet in just a few short weeks, the lives of people on an entire continent have been completely upended. Each European country has become so wrapped up in their own national drama that there’s little energy to process the increasingly horrific numbers coming out of Italy with numbing regularity._x000D_
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Beyond the more urgent human tragedy, of course, there’s an economic massacre that’s slowly unfolding. It’s not inappropriate to discuss this. It goes without saying that health takes precedence over profit. But matters of business are also of fundamental importance to people and the companies and corporations that employ them. People want and need to know if they will have a job in three months and if they’ll have enough to live on when they retire. The crisis has brought great uncertainty about these basic questions. But it’s too soon for answers. Even now, we’re likely to be at best just halfway through the worst part of the crisis. Still very much in the thick of things. All we now know at this moment is that we don’t know how it will all play out._x000D_
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And herein lies the deepest problem in terms of business: not knowing. Developers don’t know whether to start their projects, or even if they’ll be allowed to start them. They don’t know if their contractors will fall ill with the virus, or whether they’ll take delivery of the buildings materials they need. Investors have no idea how to underwrite deals at the moment, nor how long they’ll need to regain their footing in a changed landscape. And they don’t know how to value properties because the end users themselves can’t know how their strategies will have altered in the post-crisis era._x000D_
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Some combination of treatment, prevention and vaccination will eventually bring COVID-19 under control. Over time, a growing army of recovered (and hopefully immune) individuals will eventually outnumber the actively infected. There will be setbacks, but progress and hope will eventually come to dominate. The market will return. For the time being, however, we will have to learn to live with uncertainty.
