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Well I’m getting a little more interested in this. Because I have no faith or trust in the government I can’t decide if they’re just manufacturing a crisis for other reasons- or if this is really serious and they’re not telling us a lot they already know...

I tend to agree with you, SE Mom. When you figure that the common strains of flu kill 36k a year in the US, I think those in power are jumping the gun to create a crisis that they won’t have to “waste”...

Well I’m getting a little more interested in this. Because I have no faith or trust in the government I can’t decide if they’re just manufacturing a crisis for other reasons- or if this is really serious and they’re not telling us a lot they already know...

I've been following this story very closely, and unfortunately it's the latter case that appears to be more the case. They don't want to cause a panic, but all signs point in the direction that this is pretty much inevitably going to be a pandemic. It has spread globally. It's clearly passing from human to human and seems very contagious. In a matter of a week, almost an entire Catholic School was infected, and two other schools in the area are not shut down with infections. Not a good sign.

Also, watch how other countries are responding. They are responding much more vigorously to this than the U.S. is, and that is very telling. For example, New Zealand has authorized quarantines of potential infected individuals. Airplanes coming from North America are not allowed to land until the pilot screens the passengers for symptoms. In Asian, they are screening everyone in the airports for fever. Etc etc. This points to the seriousness here.

There are a few things that are red flags. One, it is a Type A flu, the only kind of flu that can become a pandemic. There is clearly human-to-human transition, and it is obviously very contagious, or else it would not be spreading so quickly already. There are deaths, and those who are dying are not the usual vulnerable populations of young and old, but people in their prime. This is the major red flag, because this is what happened in the 1918 flu that killed more people than WWI and the bubonic plague. If that is the case, we could see somewhere between 2 million and 6 million deaths from the flu in the U.S. alone, and it will spread to a large proportion of the population with a month or two, unless it peters out -- but then it could come back with a vengeance in the flu season, starting around next October.

This situation is about as serious as a heart attack. I don't think the media is underplaying this. Get your family prepared. Better safe than sorry. What to do: As some posters have already mentioned, have extra supplies of food and water in case you need to self-quarantine. You can buy masks, but more important is hand washing and use of disinfectants. So, buy a lot of Purell or some other kind of alcohol hand cleaner, and if there is an outbreak in your area, you will have some when the stores run dry of it. You'll also want to avoid crowds. So you might want to re-think going to sports events or movies, or similar crowd-related events, until this blows over.