Just like the flu, this virus causes number of very serious cases that require intensive care but care capacities in most countries are barely able to cope with a bad flu season before bed appear on hallways - and this year had a particularly bad flu season still ongoing. There are only so many ventilators and artificial lungs available in hospitals and there is limited capacity in the world to deal with a new, highly infectious pathogen hitting a population without any preexisting immunities and people requiring weeks care to recover and become non infectious

China has, for better or worse, sacrificed Wuhan to buy the rest of the country and the world time to shore up capacities and enact procedures to stagger the load that will hit healthcare systems if the virus becomes broadly entrenched. I don't think there is any healthcare system on the planet that won't severely strain if hit by the sudden load of a new, highly infectious virus with long, invisible incubation period.

The point is centralized authority is worse. In a democratic country he would have had warned quicker and his life sacrifice would have made more meaningful.

The vaccine and blood product manufacturer CSL had a Zika virus vaccine ready to roll within a few months after the outbreak, done of their own accord, it was an impressive achievement.

Diseases that do that often do so by causing (even if indirectly) the person's own immune system to overreact or otherwise go haywire.

I belive SARS had a similar impact.

My son had a situation where his immune system overreacted. We had folks from the local university on call for updates every few hours and etc. Doctors have very few things at their disposal that they can do when that happens and they get really nervous.

My son pulled through but it was an enlightening / scary moment to see doctors that concerned / with few options.

It has been observed in SARS and the 1918 flu virus they resurrected in 2007.

I seriously hope China can contain this.

I don't think there's any chance of that. I'm sure that within a month most well connected counties will have multiple cases with no apparent connection to China, and the realisation will have dawned that the cat is well and truly out of the bag.

My only hope is that the infection numbers in China are being massively under reported, i.e. because most carriers have very minor symptoms, and that therefore the mortality rate is not at bad as it currently seems.

But that's a bit of a long shot I fear.

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

In a case like this where the virus causes viral pneumonia, shortness of breath, etc, basically all the various diseases you're predisposed to if smoking, so that shortness of breath becomes a lot worse, and the little hairs in your airways have been molested by smoking, so there's not much debris/mucus transport happening out of the lungs. Viral pneumonia will most likely be joined by a bacterial pneumonia when you fail to ventilate your lungs properly.

People worry about Corona virus killing 2-5%, and yet smoking kills about 50%, with an individual risk of dying at about 300% of a non smoker.

There is currently no vaccine to prevent 2019-nCoV infection. The best way to prevent infection is to avoid being exposed to this virus. However, as a reminder, CDC always recommends everyday preventive actions to help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses, including:

  Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
  If soap and water are not readily available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. Always wash hands with soap and water if hands are visibly dirty.
  Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
  Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
  Stay home when you are sick.
  Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
  Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces using a regular household cleaning spray or wipe.

There’s no way China goes from 27k infected and it growing 15% per day to zero infections. It’s beyond containment at this point, they can’t stay on lockdown forever. And while it has barely spread beyond China, are we just going to wall off 1.4 billion people from the rest of humanity for the foreseeable future? Unlikely, probably impossible. So it seems like just a matter of time until it spreads globally, just like the flu, but much more deadly. And likely to overwhelm our medical infrastructure for the people who don’t die, many of which end up in critical condition.

I’m not panicking, but I’m concerned. Please, someone smart and well-informed, make the case for why this isn’t that big of a deal. (Hint: if you start by comparing it to total flu deaths instead of flu mortality rate, you’ve disqualified yourself).

All that to say, I have hope that this bug is less dangerous than it seems right now.

Not to be too snarky, but most of people in UK though Brexit was a good move.

I am too a bit concerned about corona, but its hard to judge how dangerous it is as long as all info goes through Chinese filter (Chinese gov prevents any outside help so they can have as much control over the PR as they can).

The cases in other countries are still too small to get a definitive answer, if this is something scary or not. All we can do is wait and see.