The guy in the coffee shop, who has never talked stocks with me, brought up the stock Afterpay while he was knocking up my “skim Cap, extra hot” this morning. This company has been the flagbearer for the stock market’s Coronavirus comeback.

You don’t believe me? Well, digest this. On Feb 19 it was a $40.50 stock. By March 23, it had plummeted to $8.90! But wait, that exclamation mark is overplayed by me.

It’s now $72.31! And Morgan Stanley tips it will go above $100!!!

That shocked my coffee guy when I told him that. And his look of surprise even strengthened when I told him that many years ago I taught Anthony Eisen, one of Afterpay’s co-founders. And this success couldn’t have happened to a better young bloke.

But this rebound in its share price shows us what’s at stake if we don’t nail this damn virus. So let me put it simply.

When COVID-19 hit us like a speeding bus through a crowded pedestrian crossing and the world went into lockdown, the stock market panicked. Afterpay and all other stocks were smashed. That $8.90 was madness but when experts start talking Great Depressions, the dash for cash makes for madness everywhere, not just on the stock market.

I recall the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, telling an interviewer that when the dotcom crash happened in 2001, his company’s share price virtually went from US$100 to US$6 overnight. He said nothing had changed in his business — he was still selling the same number of books, CDs and DVDs — but the stock market had revalued the business. He suggested the $100 price tag was over-the-top but the $6 price was the craziness that stock markets are famous for.

Now it should be pointed out that helping Afterpay’s price has been the huge Chinese company Tencent, which has taken a share in the business. But if the world is forced to go back into lockdown, that share price will fall, though it won’t go to $8.90. It will be higher but it will fall.

We’re not out of the viral and economic woods yet and the world’s politicians are having to weigh up what’s more important — lives or economies? It’s a big question as Victoria goes into its second week of a six-week lockdown and a pub in Sydney’s Casula makes us wonder if we’ll be next into lockdown, which would mean Queensland would close its border with us!

And this would jeopardize the expected pretty positive forecasts on our recovery and that then would KO the stock market.

On Friday, the Victorian Government threw a $530 million assistance package for businesses (including cash grants) and $30 million directed at the hospitality industry. But the AFR’s Jennifer Hewitt says this “will barely touch the sides.”

All these outbreaks put pressure on Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s July 23 mini-budget as he weighs up who keeps getting and who will lose support from the Government.

And then there’s the life or death question for people and the economy that he and State Premiers have to wrestle with when working out how to deal with this virus.

Infection rates might be rising in the USA but the death rate is more under control. Well, that was the story last week but The Washington Post yesterday reported that after months of decline, the death rate has started to rise. “The U.S. reported its highest single-day infections — more than 67,000 cases — on Thursday. The United States reported more than 4,200 deaths in the past seven days, and experts warn that the trend could continue to get worse,” the newspaper reported.

Politicians are doing a life and death cost benefit analysis on the health of their people and the economy and they’re hoping that outbreaks of infections can be controlled, especially in New South Wales over the next two weeks.

If New South Wales can beat the infection challenge posed by the outbreak at that Sydney pub (ironically called the Crossroads Hotel) then it won’t have to follow Victoria into lockdown. However, if it can’t, the country’s economic forecasts will be downgraded and stocks (including Afterpay) will head earthward from its current dizzy heights.

Politicians will eventually choose lives over economic growth and stock prices but they will be hoping Wall Street stock buyers have got it right — that an effective treatment or vaccine will soon ride to their and their voters’ rescue.

The now-discredited Woody Allen once looked at the threat of a global nuclear war and profoundly, cynically and amusingly said: “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” Go the vaccine researchers!