Exactly.
This has all happened only since December 31st. That’s when Chinese eye doc Lin Wenliang made his first chatroom post saying that he thought he was seeing another outbreak of SARS.
A good call on his part since this turns out to be a close cousin. Covid-19 is also known as SARS-CoV-2.
For his trouble, Lin Wenliang was arrested along with 7 other docs that he had been chatting with. They were forced to plead guilty to spreading rumors and told to STFU.
Dr Wenliang went back to his eye practice. He failed to wear his mask while treating an elderly woman who showed no symptoms, but she did have it and he caught it. He died Feb 7th, age 33.
Anyway if you judge by China’s behavior in Wuxan, Covid-19 looks very dangerous. But that’s not obvious outside of China. Maybe it will be about like the flu. Or maybe it will flare into the monster Wuxan is dealing with. There’s too much that we don’t know about it, other than that it is highly infectious like most airborn respiratory bugs.