This is much misinformation and disinformation out there, and it is hard to figure out what to believe. That's not even beginning to count the conspiracy theories.
For days the Chinese have been saying that there appears to be evidence that someone who is asymptomatic(without symptoms) can be contagious. Yet the US CDC says that isn't so. Just yesterday an article appeared that stated Chinese authorities had found a 10 year old boy, who had an upper respiratory track infection, was outwardly asymptomatic, and was contagious. So, who does one believe?
The conspiracy theories revolve around this being a man made virus, and there appears to be some evidence of that. Apparently, part of the RNA chain is not normal looking. So, it is not known if it is just a normal "mutation", a recombination of RNA from two different animals(snake and bat), or man made. Then, if it was man made, was it a deliberate release, or an accident?
Many medical people feel as "Flight Medic" does, that is nothing but a "cold". Since I read the same thing on another form from a poster whose wife is an RN, with a Master's in Nursing. She, and all the medical people she works with want to know what the big deal is? It's just a cold.
Her husband, the poster, says, what bothers him is the Chinese response to this "cold". It's all out of proportion to it being "just a cold". It's mortality rate seems to be running at about 3%. Some variance, but 2.5-3%. I don't believe that colds kill that many people.
So, what does one believe? There's the old adage, of Hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. I think that most of us here have some sort of disaster preps going on, which should keep most of us off the streets and out of contact with people should this turn nasty. However, it might be prudent to lay in a supply of cold and flu meds. If they don't get used now, I'm sure they will come in handy the next flu season.
Freely stolen from another forum.
https://systems.jhu.edu/research/pub...th/ncov-model/
“Our metapopulation model is based on a global network of local, city-level, populations connected by edges representing passenger air travel between cities. At each node of the network, we locally model outbreak dynamics using a discrete-time Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) compartmental model. IATA monthly passenger travel volumes for all travel routes connecting airport pairs (including stopovers) is used to construct the weighted edges. The SEIR parameters are defined based on a 10 day period from exposure to recovery, aligning with a previously published report, divided into a 5 day incubation and 5 day recovery period for the purposes of this analysis. The effective contact rate corresponds to a reproductive number of 2, which aligns with an estimate from Imperial College London, reporting a range between 1.5 and 3.5. We assume initial cases of 2019-nCoV are only present in Wuhan, and no border control is accounted for. The model results presented are based on an average of 250 runs.
Results
The simulation model is run for a time period between the start of the outbreak, up until January 25. The simulation results align with the number of air travel reported cases outside of mainland China early in the outbreak; specifically, we estimate 40 cases of 2019-nCoV to have been exported outside of mainland China by January 25, as was reported.
For 40 cases to have been exported out of the country, we believe the number of 2019-nCoV cases in mainland China are likely much higher than that reported throughout January. Specifically, we estimate there to be around 20,000 cases of 2019-nCoV in mainland China on January 25 (at which time closer to 2000 were reported). We also estimate there were already hundreds of human cases of 2019-nCoV in Wuhan in early December. The estimated verses confirmed cases during January are presented in Figure 1. Our estimates are slightly higher than those from two other modeling exercises, namely, a report out of Imperial College estimated 4000 cases in mainland China on January 18, and a report out of Northeastern University estimated 12,700 on January 24. However, there was a substantial and rapid increase in reported cases outside of China during these dates, which is still occurring, and likely to lead to higher estimates than those in this study.”
Note: The first paragraph refers to a "reproductive value"(r-0) of 1.5 - 3.5. That is the number of people it assumes will be infected by a person. The lower the number, the fewer the number of people who will get infected, and the higher the number, the more people. Yet, I've seen r-0 values of 3.-5. But, that number was from Chinese sources, and with their living conditions and population, they may have a higher r-0 value than we would here.
So, again, what, or who, does one believe. I tend to go with many people. That we cannot believe the number China is releasing. They don't have a stellar track record for truthfulness. But, at the time, can the CDC be trusted? Since they will be into panic prevention.