No one would argue that breathing is essential for us to survive. But sometimes we need to hold our breath in order to survive.
You always need to view thing in their context. If someone were to ask you „Do we need to breathe to survive?“ your answer would be yes and in general that’s absolutely true. But in certain contexts, the opposite is the case. Sometimes we need to hold our breath in order to survive, for example when we are under water.
So without knowing the context you actually can’t give an appropriate answer.
Now you might ask „And what does this have to do with investing?“
Well in that context we need to understand that those with the longest breath will succeed in the end while those with a short term view will take losses because they are missing the right context. It’s as if they want to continue breathing when they are actually currently under water.
Of course this metaphor has its flaws as we can only hold our breath for a limited amount of time. I just use it to give you a picture for reference.
If you want to survive through this crisis (and any other) you must develop the skill of taking long breaths. That way you will grow your investments in the long run.
I talk about it in the context on investing here:
