The common cold already is. You rub your eyes, the virus enters your tears, which drain to your nose.
It reminds me how much of the "panic!" signal I've been really starting to see explode in the last ~24h, which humans are highly sympathetically attuned to when they suddenly see it spreading everywhere around them, is just from a sheer mass of other idiots who actually don't know anything either coming online on the issue, and reflects internet meme virality, and only very indirectly the uptick in actual danger (ie, from having been loosely following the outbreak, prior to this latest popularization).
Still looks pretty fucking bad, though.
If you're using a face mask, you should be washing your hands anyway, because if you think it's working, the moment you touch it you've come in contact with virus.
Hard to do, I know, but it eliminates a major source of transmission.
They aren't spending time confirming that dead patients had coronavirus when they are in crisis mode.
It matters critically if China, or anyone else, is in any way lying about anything.
Official reports are 2K infected, if it's actually 100K and they are not telling the WHO, it's really, really bad.
What the 'put on the news' is another matter and gray area concerning information control in crisis times (i.e. trying to stop mass panic). But with the WHO and other governments, it's another story.
It's not like they can entirely hide these things, I really wonder what kind of other 'interested parties' are making their own clandestine measurements.
In the end none of the above matters at all. What matters is the willingness globally to take political and economic action to contain transmission. The World Health Organization's failure to declare this a global emergency is risky if the characteristics stated above turn out to be accurate. Timing is key.