I've heard 1-14 days with an average of 3 days, but I'd have to dig up sources. But even if the long incubation periods are rare, they'll still have an outsized impact.

>average of 3 days

That should be 'mean'

Mean is a type of average. And for communicating to the public, unless there's a strong reason otherwise, statistical jargon should absolutely be avoided in favor of more universally understood terminology.

Even worse, this is a total blunder, I meant 'median'.

Also, what would the mechanism be? Coughing is the ‘normal’ mechanism to move viruses out of your lungs.

If it spreads before the coughing starts, i.e. during normal breathing, doesn’t it get out of your body too easily?

The virus accumulates in digestive organs and sheds in fecal matter. Gastrointestinal (fecal-oral) infection route seems likely.

See:

- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.14.20022939v...

- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.20.20025601v...

> Compared with SARS, COVID-19 was transmitted in a more diverse way, from person to person, asymptomatic infected people and possible fecal-oral transmission, created the conditions for a large-scale spread.

- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.17.20023721v...

I've grown tired of pulling up sources on mobile but publications claim the virus accumulates in nasal passaged during incubation. Also thought to play a role in the high false negative rates for testing.

This is also true - digestive and respiratory organs appear to accumulate the virus most. Also heart and liver, which explains the high co-morbidity for people with damage to those organs.

See http://www.chinaxiv.org/abs/202002.00082

Looks like any organ with ACE2 receptors.

Lots of reports of this, for example: http://www.chinaxiv.org/abs/202002.00078