[BobL]

They get 14 days to cool their heels in Tokyo Harbor now. We also get to find out just how contagious this bug is.

...and by the way, this boat never even went to China (I think it was scheduled to go there, but diverted to Hong Kong, you know, to be ‘safe’).

[ProtectOurFreedom]

14 days won't do it because not everybody will get sick at the same time. One person passes it to another person who passes it to another person who passes it on, etc.

The diagram below is a schematic of a disease branching process. Two generations of infections are shown. Every horizontal bar segment represents the time interval that a specified individual remains infectious. The first sick person (farthest left bar) infects three others. The top-most person does not infect any others. The other two infected by Patient 0 infect two others.

Now imagine this process being carried out from one patient to the 3,600 people on that ship. It would take a long time for the disease to play out. How long would that be? I have no idea. A month? Two months?

[unread]

"They get 14 days to cool their heels in Tokyo Harbor now. We also get to find out just how contagious this bug is."

Yeah... A giant test tube.. I'll wager a lot of folks are thinking of jumping ship...