Well if the entire world blew up, I would be guaranteed to keep all the premium from the bull put spreads I sold! Not bad huh...
I don't think it's overblown. It only appears to be, because the pandemic has not started yet. The disease cannot be transmitted from human to human. In very rare occasions it can be transmitted from bird to human. This is not the problem. The problem is that the virus may suffer mutations, and become transmittable from man to man. Believe me, I'm from Romania (Europe, not Africa, not Far East Asia) and I know how quickly this disease can spread among chicken. One is contaminated and in a few days they die in the thousands. With very strict measures of contaiment, the flu has managed to spread from remote villages right into the capital. It seems unstopabble. They started to kill all chicken, as a preventive measure. I wonder what will they do when it mutates. Start killing people? There are high chances that the dangerous mutation will not happen. But the very small chance that it happens is so unthinkable, that all this talk on the media about it appears reasonable to me. A bit of exaggeration is meant to get all of us from a state of mind that "something like that can only happen to others, not to me". It's always better to be prepared. If you want a trading perspective, this is like running a trade without a stop-loss. And the possible loss is not just money - it's your life! Now, I'm not stating that this is the end of the world. Far from it. Humanity survived much greater threats, when it was much less prepared to face them. We survived the Great Plague, which killed 30% of Europe population. We survived the Spanish Flu (also of avian origin!) after World War I, which killed more than the war itself. All I'm saying is that people in the industrialized countries should not stay ignorant of the danger, and should spend more on scientific research for treatments. Note: Tamiflu, the only medicine that is supposed to cure the disease, works on the current virus only. If it mutates, it will be necesarry to develop a new treatment.
And they will have a new treatment. I trust the advancement of technology (in this case, bio-technology).