Ponyo, if you're still interested in shorts, I think you can still make quite a lot of money if the entire system doesn't collapse. I'd basically guarantee at least a temporary freeze on financial markets before this is over, and we're not even remotely as bad off as we will be in 2-4 weeks.
The problem with those big boys, who indeed don't want a Mad Max world, is that they all want someone ELSE to fix or pay for things to be better. They think their usual M.O. : buy off politicians with PAC/SuperPAC and continual regulatory capture, is enough for continual success, even in bad times. And you know what? Usually it is. The biggest interests get bailouts and payoffs, already seen. Unfortunately for them, this problem is bigger than any financial number in any account or list anywhere. First, employment and the consumer economy as we know it is gone, and not in a '5%' less kind of way, which would already be devastating to a system addicted to leverage and cheap debt to keep zombie Corporations afloat. No, it's gone in a way that will see 40% unemployment as the floor, and probably closer to 50-55%, GDP probably cut by at least a third, tax revenue nullified in its entirety (measured against bailout outlays), and deaths high into the ten digit range.
None of these big boys or institutions are designed or willing to take the 'hard' choice. The infected TODAY mostly don't know yet that they're sick, or just have some slight symptoms worrying them a bit. We haven't done the difficult but necessary task of across the board lockdown yet, and afraid of spooking the markets, we've even floated bad advice to not wear masks (which indeed can fail to protect the wearer itself, but which hugely reduces OUTBOUND droplet transmissions). Mixed messages and major famous people falling ill to this have made these people uneasy and rushed to pack into supermarkets and convenience stores. Hospitals are having workers interact with patients with no PPE, then sending them home to spread the disease to their families, roommates, bus passengers, subway passengers, etc. Fire, EMS and Police departments across the country are responding to calls to people who are now showing to widely infect these groups.
Italy is just another warning we didn't take. They finally locked down, but saw rising death rates for several weeks afterwards, and only now just stabilizing a continually terrible death rate. We haven't gotten close to their level of action and response yet, and our curve is only ACCELERATING.
We're literally days away at the most, 8-10 days, from seeing many hundreds of dead per day, then many thousands per day, then into the tens of thousands per day. Bodies stacked like cordwood on the streets and alleys because there's no time to deal with them, hospitals locked down because they are already at 500% capacity and half the staff are dying or dead. This is coming. And the big boys and their markets aren't doing anything about it, nor can they at this point. They needed to demand better preparedness years ago, and decisive action months ago. But the entire structure failed, and in retrospect it's easy to see why. We simply became too corrupt, we stripped the political system of any incentive to benefit humanity, and replaced it with a comprehensive gaggle of sychophants and puppets who only danced to strings for corporate profits.