Apple Closes All Stores, Corporate Offices, and Contact Centers in China Through February 9 Due to Coronavirus Outbreak

The world needs to prepare better for these outbreaks. As long as countries like China allow animal markets to trade live animals taken from the wild for consumption, this will continue to happen regularly.

The world is prepared just fine, including a dedicated international health organization for issues just like this (WHO ('https://www.who.int/')). What's needed is for China to stop worrying about saving face and putting the world at risk by covering up their infectious disease outbreaks. They were actually arresting doctors in Wuhan who were reporting about the disease in their patients. The world has no place for a society which operates like that.

It's interesting how much focus this virus outbreak gets from WHO and the press. There must be a strong political side to this, because: In Germany alone, 20,000 people die --every year!-- of the Influenza virus - also known as "the flu". In the winter of 2018, around 80,000 people died of Influenza in the US (which was higher a toll than the "usual" 56,000 deaths every year). The Influenza virus was first isolated in 1901 -- so we had almost 120 years to study it. It's still constantly changing and killing people.

Can't wait for an equivalent response to the flu given how much more infectious and deadly it is than coronavirus. Or SARS.

The world needs to prepare better for these outbreaks. As long as countries like China allow animal markets to trade live animals taken from the wild for consumption, this will continue to happen regularly.

And as the world has become a village, it spreads like wildfire.

It's interesting how much focus this virus outbreak gets from WHO and the press. There must be a strong political side to this, because: In Germany alone, 20,000 people die --every year!-- of the Influenza virus - also known as "the flu". In the winter of 2018, around 80,000 people died of Influenza in the US (which was higher a toll than the "usual" 56,000 deaths every year). The Influenza virus was first isolated in 1901 -- so we had almost 120 years to study it. It's still constantly changing and killing people.

No, that's not interesting at all, and this has nothing to do with politics. Even though last year was the highest in 40 years, the mortality rate from flu in 2019 in the US was at most 0.15% (about 43 million got sick), and the mortality rate in other years is usually around 0.1%. Only 1.5% of those who catch the flu even get sick enough to be hospitalized.

The current mortality rate from the novel coronavirus, in contrast, is over 2%. Thats ZERO POINT ONE FIVE percent versus TWO percent.

Doing the math from the above numbers, coronavirus currently has at least 13x higher mortality than the flu. The total number of cases has also now surpassed the entire SARS outbreak.

The flu is something that we never had the chance to get under control, because it has been widespread throughout human history. This is very different. With appropriate steps this can be contained just as SARS was.

It's interesting how much focus this virus outbreak gets from WHO and the press. There must be a strong political side to this, because: In Germany alone, 20,000 people die --every year!-- of the Influenza virus - also known as "the flu". In the winter of 2018, around 80,000 people died of Influenza in the US (which was higher a toll than the "usual" 56,000 deaths every year). The Influenza virus was first isolated in 1901 -- so we had almost 120 years to study it. It's still constantly changing and killing people.

I think the main scare of these types of viruses are they are new. Unlike the ones we deal with every winter that still do do a good amount of damage (because a good amount of the population is to stubborn to get a shot), we don’t typically have a good understanding of how the Wuhan Virus will mutate or progress. If it has the ability to mutate rapidly and starts doing major damage to the population there is no defense for it at the moment, that’s what whips the news into a frenzy, if your worried about common winter influenza the solution is simple: a free flu shot.

More people died from the regular flu this week than have died from coronavirus all time. Way more. This is something to be mildly worried about due to some chance it spreads rapidly, but there are far worse realities.

The mortality of this virus is pretty low and only impacts those with weakened immune systems. This isn’t Ebola.

I do not really think we know anything about this virus yet, since it is so new. I do not trust China to give real numbers on who has it and who's died. We will have to wait till other countries get it and see what numbers come from them.
[automerge]1580585937[/automerge]

Exactly and the Chinese Government is footing the bill for all this. Anyone who is positive gets free treatment. Do the people in the US with Influenza get free medical care and treatment for The Influenza Virus?

The Chinese gov't paying for all this, may be a good clue as to how bad their gov't thinks this can get.

It's interesting how much focus this virus outbreak gets from WHO and the press. There must be a strong political side to this, because: In Germany alone, 20,000 people die --every year!-- of the Influenza virus - also known as "the flu". In the winter of 2018, around 80,000 people died of Influenza in the US (which was higher a toll than the "usual" 56,000 deaths every year). The Influenza virus was first isolated in 1901 -- so we had almost 120 years to study it. It's still constantly changing and killing people.

This "flu" is much more contagious and also more lethal than the "seasonal" flu. People are infectious even without symptoms.

Though, we do not really "know" any real data about lethality etc because you cannot trust anything out of China.

We'd need more cases in the Western hemisphere.

You don't really need a high lethality to bring a Western-style society to a halt. Imagine a million or ten more people clogging up the US health-system.

Understandable, right now it's the best they can do.

The world needs to prepare better for these outbreaks. As long as countries like China allow animal markets to trade live animals taken from the wild for consumption, this will continue to happen regularly.

And as the world has become a village, it spreads like wildfire.

12.024 cases in China, "just" 164 in the rest of the world, until now all deaths are contained in China, it's not too bad yet outside of China.
The problem right now seems to be China's healthcare can't cope with testing the sheer numbers of people and containing the spread of the Corona virus.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

China: 12.024 cases 259 deaths 2.15%
Rest of world: 164 cases 0 deaths 0%

When an epidemic hits they usually foot the bill but when one hits in the US the Government does not foot the bill. More died from Influenza over the last year compared to the Coronavirus. All around the world **** happens but it's what the Government does for their people after is what counts. I believe the Government put up $1.6 Billion in to help with Coronavirus. It also took measure by mandating certain businesses and manufacturers close to help prevent the spread of this Corona Virus.

China alerted the World Health Organization (WHO) to several cases of pneumonia in Wuhan on Dec. 31, 2019. They identified the new virus on Jan 7th, 2020. It is literally 1 month old (Over 250 dead in China). You can't compare a year of the flu to 1 month of the Coronavirus.