[FoxInSocks]

Lots of different sicknesses have the same symptoms.

Precisely. So why are people literally panicking about something as mild and commonplace as a flu-like illness?

Different drugs work on different issues, and stuff like antibiotics is useless on a viral infections.

If they draw your blood and find bacteria in it, they can prescribe the appropriate antibiotic. If you have a viral infection, they can treat the symptoms. If the symptoms are limited to a fever, cough, headache, and malaise, you can drink lots of water and get rest at home. If you have comorbidities and a weakened immune system and then you develop a systemic infection, you need to go to the hospital.

[Svartalfiar]

Precisely. So why are people literally panicking about something as mild and commonplace as a flu-like illness?

Because it's not as mild and commonplace as the flu. The flu is much more widespread, but if we're not careful enough then the Wuhan virus can reach the same or more people. And it's definitely more deadly - even the lowest estimates using cherry-picked data and incorrect CFR math gives a fatality rate of 0.7% - when the flu is somewhere in the 0.1-0.2% range.


If they draw your blood and find bacteria in it, they can prescribe the appropriate antibiotic. If you have a viral infection, they can treat the symptoms. If the symptoms are limited to a fever, cough, headache, and malaise, you can drink lots of water and get rest at home. If you have comorbidities and a weakened immune system and then you develop a systemic infection, you need to go to the hospital.

Correct. And it goes to your original point - if we didn't do any testing, the doc wouldn't know which of those was the correct answer.