Only...this isn’t the common flu. Not even close.
This one, reportedly, can spread via sneezes, coughs, saliva and poop.
Does the common flu spread via poop?
Thus, the worry for spread in the homeless areas in CA, etc.
Yes, the flu and common cold can be spread by all those vectors.
Most people don't come in contact with other people's feces.
I am doing my own “Drago Mortality Rate” calculation: as of today 5512 cases outside of China & Iran (I don’t trust their #’s for my calculation)...51 deaths among those 5500 for a simplified/non-scientific “Drago Mort. Rate” of 0.93%. For common flu in the USA 2017-2018 was a “bad flu season” and had about 44,802,000 cases with 61,000 fatalities for a “Drago Mort. Rate” of 0.14% so COVID-19 appears to be about 6.6x as deadly as regular flu right now (rate is going down as more cases are treated by 1st world medicine). I heard that “SARS-CoV-2” (that is the virus name...the disease is “COVID-19”) is “poo transmissible”, but haven’t done any research into it. Now that coronavirus is “community spreading” in the USA, better #’s on mortality rate, “R0” (contagiousness), and “seriousness” will become available as the case count in the US rises (for “seriousness” I have seen data that COVID-19 requires hospitalization and intubation at a higher rate than regular flu). The big problem with official #’s now is that the US isn’t testing very much at all...the South Koreans are doing thousands of tests and the USA is in the low hundreds. Could be more widespread in the USA, but being masked as “reg. flu”.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm