Re: Is the sky falling?
Aside from making fun of the situation, there are some serious bits that deserve attention.
The US response has been a cluster f---. The response to block flights from China, was a great start, but then allowing people back without quarantine kind of messed things up. No matter what, the virus would have gotten here, but the more prepared we are the better, and we threw away a precious lead time. The choice to go with a CDC developed test (instead of one used by the WHO) and which then, for its first batches, had a contaminated component lost us valuable information. You can't tell how fast the virus is spreading if you don't have test kits that work. Whether that test kit decision was a money thing or a power thing, or just a mistake, it still lost valuable time. Now the kits are out there, but no one knows how much spread there is in a community until people start to get sick, and by then many more people are infected.
The reason why it was foolish for the POTUS to tweet out misinformation in an attempt to keep everyone calm, is that as soon as people find out stuff isn't true there is a credibility gap, and then panic ensues. This is not just like a flu virus, no big deal as he said. I thought it was particularly funny when he said something about no one dies of the flu, and his own grandfather died.
Besides hoarding corn cobs, what is important and why:
There is no treatment, and no vaccine, and there is no "herd immunity" meaning no one has had it before and recovered, so basically anyone that is exposed is likely to catch it. This is really different from most of the "regular" flu's where spread will be slower because a lot of people have antibodies because they either have had it before or were vaccinated, and therefore won't catch it, and won't give it to anyone else either. If 20% of the people that catch it require medical attention, 20% of everyone is a big number! The health care system will be overwhelmed here as it is in Italy, and as it was in China. We simply don't have enough healthcare workers and hospital beds and high tech equipment to go around.
What we know about the virus is that it is highly contagious, and people can shed virus and infect someone else before they are symptomatic. So measuring temperatures at the airport is only partly effective. Telling people to stay home if they are sick is also only partly effective at curtailing spread. The only thing that is effective at slowing the spread is "social isolation". This means staying away from people unless absolutely necessary. And wash your hands a million times a day.
The old (over 60!) seem to die more frequently than the young among the cases that have been tested and verified as covid 19. Children exhibit few or no symptoms, and if you know how they wipe their noses with the backs of their hands and then put their chubby little hands in yours, can act as remarkably efficient spreaders. So keeping them away from Grandma is smart. Closing schools is therefore a good idea.
What is not known is anything about the long term consequences of an infection if you don't die. How long are you sub par? I had regular old pneumonia once when I was in my 30s. It was a couple of months before I could bound up the stairs two at a time again. The covid 19 has been observed to cause lung fibrosis (scar tissue formation) by MRI scans. Some kinds of lung fibrosis never go away..so how long before you can work effectively again?
Nothing is known about damage to babies in utero if the mother is infected. Some of these viruses cause damage to the developing nervous system during the early stages of pregnancy, remember the Zika virus babies?
A pathologist reported finding the covid 19 virus post mortem in the brain stem, where the motor neurons are that regulate breathing. That might account for why respirators are needed for the sickest. And maybe why someone might go suddenly from a slight cough to dead in a few hours (my speculation). A lot of viruses migrate to the cns via nerve cells, think shingles. So I would not conclude that this is a benign virus until there is a whole lot more information available.
I am convinced this virus is a problem of unknown proportions, and that I don't want to get it. The CDC has a website with a lot of information on it:
coronavirus.gov.
What I think is useful for most people to do is
get refills on your most needed meds, eg high blood pressure, insulin, etc.
arrange to work at home if possible
avoid gatherings of large or maybe even medium numbers of people
consider ordering a lot of stuff on line
be considerate of other people, not doing what you want may slow the spread and let the health care system catch up