The US has this morning banning all visitors who have even been to China recently, let alone direct flights.
Please do not parrot the nonsense that flu is a bigger threat than this particular corona virus. There are several articles today claiming just that, but they all say “for now” and they all are US-centric.
The flu infects from 3% to 11% of the US population annually. It kills just under 1 per thousand. Hence around 8000 deaths in the USA.it has a reproduction rate of around 1.28, which means that on average one person infects 1.28 more people.
THERE ARE FLU VACCINES, and some herd immunity, hence the low total infection rate of 3-11%
Coronavirus has no vaccines, and will not for about six months., and there is zero herd immunity anywhere because this is a novel virus: brand new, not seen before, no defences.
2019 nCoV (catchy name) is at least as infectious as flu, perhaps twice as much with R estimates of 1.8-3.6.
Coupled with the lack of immunity, this virus will travel faster than the flu.
It looks like the mortality rate is at least 2.5%, which means that it will kill around 25/1000.
So if this disease infects only as many people as the flu, it will kill 25 times more people. In the US alone thats >200,000. And thats the sunny estimate. It could actually be worse.
“But hey! Don’t worry yourself, keep spending” seems to be the crux of all of these happy horse**** articles
ON EDIT: READ THIS from the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...gtype=Homepage