I watched the same interview right from the horses mouth Carl said the panic is unfounded!! People on the cruise ship all had pre existing conditions OR were very elderly!!! His companion has the virus also with NO symptoms at all Carl is doing fine and doesn’t know what all the hype is about considering how many die from the flu EVERY YEAR!!
You seem worried.
Do you think China is destroying its economy and its citizens out of “ panic”?
Pay attention to what is happening in one of the most ruthlessly politically authoritarian nations on earth where this started and THEY KNOW WHY
“ just the flu”
In fact, in many years, in some areas of the US, hospitals beds and ICU's are nearly maxed out by existing needs during the height of flu season.
COVID-19 is more infectious than flu, and has a higher mortality CASE RATE even in top hospitals with top notch capacity and equipment to care for respiratory illnesses. (See study done in the Wuhan University Hospital. That facility is NOT some dump!!)
If* you buy their numbers, China has slowed the spread of COVID-19... with actions only a authoritarian regime or martial law could impose, and which are killing their economy - not to mention damaging many other countries' economies. (I do not really need to explain "supply chain" yet again??) This even hurts exports of raw materials from countries like the US and Canada, to China.
This brings up the question of whether any temperate zone country can, once COVID-19 is well entrenched, walk the tightrope between containment leading to a wrecked economy on one hand (which itself will lead to many deaths), and COVID-19 blowing right past flu and well beyond in number of cases, on the other hand.
*But if you buy the Chinese numbers, and those of other countries now too, there is no denying how quickly this virus spreads in absence of exceptional measures to contain it. If you DON'T buy their numbers, it's worse.
His companion has the virus also with NO symptoms at all
That is, in fact, one of the biggest problems with COVID-19. Even a small % of asymptomatic spreaders make a disease very difficult to contain.
Yes, most people have moderate symptoms to no symptoms, but unlike common colds**, with this virus there are a quite significant number of people (relative to resources) who need hospitalization, or even ICU level treatment. Are you just writing them off? Do you have no friends or loved ones who might fit this category?
Once hospital bed and ICU capacities are surpassed, then deaths from all causes, and respiratory illnesses in particular, will increase in parallel with the gap in available treatments.
**Indeed, perhaps the best "simple" way to think of COVID-19 is as the common cold, except with a significant percentage of severe to critical cases. Even if that percentage is only 1% or 2%, well, run the numbers as time passes.
With a little luck, and our "best and brightest" "on it, hopefully the spread can be slowed, and maybe most of the US will have a warm / early spring. That should help, and buy time for the fall virus season. The global economic problems are going to be tough any way you cut it, even if infections level off in a week or two. South Korea is going to tell us a lot.
Panic? No. That almost never makes sense. (Maybe if there are more zombies in the zombie hoard than my buddies and I have bullets... /s)
"Yellow alert" for family health and economic risks? Yes, I'd say that's appropriate.