If that isn't a sign that a recession is coming, I don't know what is.
I never said average Joe won't be affected by this. What I am saying is that the big players will still be big once this is over but there will be new players as well. Also China will likely lose ground in the global production lines, and companies will likely look at alternatives, even if they have to make a compromise with scale and price. Investors like safe bets and what the current situation has taught is is that China isn't a safe option. We knew that already but the nets around the foxconn factories are a bit... Out of sight, out of mind.
16 million is a horrific number and I sincerely hope they pull through without paying a heavy price. But put your mind in a different mindset - 16 million is an incredible amount of manpower. For the 16 million - that's a tragedy but for the people with deep pockets - that's a once in a lifetime opportunity if they play their cards well. And I'm more than certain that many out there will.
Obviously this isn't reality but if you have enough money to be considered an "investor", the 16 million unemployed aren't the people in the forefront of your mind. They're also probably watching the covid task force briefings while wearing the same rose colored glasses that our mango unchained has.
It's actually worse than that. The 16.8 million figure is for new jobless claims over the last three weeks [1]. There's additional people who were already unemployed before this, and there may be even more who've lost their jobs but haven't been able to successfully file a unemployment claim yet (due to the systems being overwhelmed).
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/business/economy/unemploy...