Remarks

The Lasting Toll of a Deadly Virus

Hyundai, Levi Strauss, and Apple are already feeling the impact of the coronavirus.

A supermarket in Hong Kong on Feb. 5.
Photographer: Keith Tsuji/Abaca/Sipa USA/AP Photo

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By Peter Coy

February 6, 2020 at 9:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the February 10, 2020 issue of businessweek.

For businesspeople around the world, the new coronavirus that sprang from China is producing a severe case of cognitive dissonance. Their eyes are telling them things are bad: rising fatalities, history’s biggest quarantine, sealed international borders, broken supply chains, shuttered businesses. But economists are telling them the epidemic will lower China’s 2020 economic growth by just a couple tenths of a percentage point and global growth essentially not at all.

So, which is it, a global crisis or a tempest in a Wuhan teapot? A lot hangs on the answer.