Every day I receive dozens of notices from various companies providing guidance on how they are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as what they think the likely outcome for real estate investments will be.

Never in my life have I seen so many people opining on a topic as confusing as this one. The fact is, none of us really knows what the likely outcome will be because no one knows precisely how far and wide this pandemic will spread.

Meanwhile, I can’t help but notice this particular crisis is different from the global crises we’ve faced in the recent past. In most of those cases — the global financial crisis, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, SARS and MERS — the crisis actually brought us together. This time, however, the crisis seems to be producing politically entrenched behaviour, with lots of finger-pointing at the opposition. I suppose this is, in part, because one of the best ways to insulate yourself from exposure is to distance yoursel