why is there a toilet paper shortage? ……….because when someone sneezes five people shit their pants.
ppp
S. It is the long expected hop of a member of a common group of viruses to humans from a species not yet determined but perhaps from bats indirectly through pangolin. Professionals in the field of public health have been waiting for, preparing for as best they could, and expecting this to happen all their professional lives. SARS, MERS, Swine Flu and Ebola all had the potential to turn into this sort of event, but for various reasons were easier to stop than the Covid-19 virus has turned out to be. Or maybe we just got lucky with these other potential pandemics. In any case, where this thing came from doesn't change a damn thing - we are still faced with this pandemic, and governments and individuals everywhere need to make some important strategic decisions very quickly if they have any chance whatever of controlling the load on hospitals and staff to manageable levels. 
Ladies and gents, I will a bit reluctantly jump in here. Given the errors in understanding here, I will brave the flaming.
Facts on this outbreak are not easy to find, but here for your enjoyment are a few:
1. This outbreak is not "fake news" it is an historic health emergency that is just getting started outside China. Let me emphasize, this is just getting started outside China, so please don't give me any bs about how few people have been killed so far. Deaths from this disease have only just begun in jurisdictions that are failing to control this. Few governments have yet demonstrated the ability to get a lid on this thing. China has controlled the outbreak more or less completely by extreme quarantine measures which were enforced, coupled with massive and spectacularly quick expansion of medical treatment facilities. South Korea seems to have been successful largely by extremely high levels of testing and contact tracing, ditto for Singapore. But Italian hospitals are in meltdown after too little was done too late there - this in spite of extreme quarantine measures which are enforced (40,000 people charged so far according to today's news). Medical staff there describe the outbreak as "an explosion" of serious and critical cases, of being completely buried in a "tsunami" of very sick people when only a few days earlier, they believed the outbreak was under control. Early outbreak data suggest to me that much of the EU and the USA may be headed rapidly in Italy's direction, and it is quite possible that my home country Canada is not far behind. This virus does not wait for governments to get their shit together.
2. Covid-19 is less lethal to younger folks, true enough, but it still kills plenty of them, so don't get too cocky because you are not one of those expendable old folks and you don't give a hoot about parents, grandparents or older friends. We are all going to lose friends and loved ones to this disease over the next year or so, and some of them will not be over 50.
3. Mortality rates from this disease are serious. At minimum they are many times worse than seasonal flu which kills tens of thousands of people every year. Most recent expert estimates put the infection fatality rate at somewhere in the region of 1%. ~1% doesn't sound like much, but it is an order of magnitude worse than seasonal flu which regularly kills more than a half million people globally in a single year. If, for example, 30% of Americans catch Covid-19 over the next year, which percent is likely excessively optimistic, 1% mortality would kill more than a million Americans. Understand further here that the 1% estimate likely depends on everyone who needs a ventilator getting one. PBS tonight showed maps illustrating the mismatch between available and required hospital capacity in the US. At even their moderate scenario, many jurisdictions especially in the west were at 1000% capacity during projected pandemic conditions. No, that number is not a slipped decimal point. Bottom line is that unless this thing is brought under dramatic control very soon, it will utterly overwhelm hospital facilities in short order, as it has already done in Italy, which by the way, has more ventilators per capita than many jurisdictions, including Canada and the USA. Quite aside from the dead patients involved here, spare a moment to think about what the medical staff immersed in this chaos will be experiencing.
4. This thing did not come from a biological weapons factory
In closing this rant I sincerely suggest that everyone here start listening to their public health experts, not their bloody politicians, and if you give even a particle of a shit about your fellow citizens, STAY HOME IF YOU HAVE ANY COLD OR FLU SYMPTOMS!!! This disease is often mild, but such infections can still be passed on to people it will kill. If your local jurisdiction imposes more general quarantine measures, they will almost certainly be doing so to control chaos in hospitals, so understand that not following the rules could well doom one of your friends or neighbours to a nasty and untimely death when no respirator is available when needed. OTOH, you might be the one needing the respirator. Even if you are only 30.
Ladies and gents, I will a bit reluctantly jump in here. Given the errors in understanding here, I will brave the flaming.
Facts on this outbreak are not easy to find, but here for your enjoyment are a few:
1. This outbreak is not "fake news" it is an historic health emergency that is just getting started outside China. Let me emphasize, this is just getting started outside China, so please don't give me any bs about how few people have been killed so far. Deaths from this disease have only just begun in jurisdictions that are failing to control this. Few governments have yet demonstrated the ability to get a lid on this thing. China has controlled the outbreak more or less completely by extreme quarantine measures which were enforced, coupled with massive and spectacularly quick expansion of medical treatment facilities. South Korea seems to have been successful largely by extremely high levels of testing and contact tracing, ditto for Singapore. But Italian hospitals are in meltdown after too little was done too late there - this in spite of extreme quarantine measures which are enforced (40,000 people charged so far according to today's news). Medical staff there describe the outbreak as "an explosion" of serious and critical cases, of being completely buried in a "tsunami" of very sick people when only a few days earlier, they believed the outbreak was under control. Early outbreak data suggest to me that much of the EU and the USA may be headed rapidly in Italy's direction, and it is quite possible that my home country Canada is not far behind. This virus does not wait for governments to get their shit together.
2. Covid-19 is less lethal to younger folks, true enough, but it still kills plenty of them, so don't get too cocky because you are not one of those expendable old folks and you don't give a hoot about parents, grandparents or older friends. We are all going to lose friends and loved ones to this disease over the next year or so, and some of them will not be over 50.
3. Mortality rates from this disease are serious. At minimum they are many times worse than seasonal flu which kills tens of thousands of people every year. Most recent expert estimates put the infection fatality rate at somewhere in the region of 1%. ~1% doesn't sound like much, but it is an order of magnitude worse than seasonal flu which regularly kills more than a half million people globally in a single year. If, for example, 30% of Americans catch Covid-19 over the next year, which percent is likely excessively optimistic, 1% mortality would kill more than a million Americans. Understand further here that the 1% estimate likely depends on everyone who needs a ventilator getting one. PBS tonight showed maps illustrating the mismatch between available and required hospital capacity in the US. At even their moderate scenario, many jurisdictions especially in the west were at 1000% capacity during projected pandemic conditions. No, that number is not a slipped decimal point. Bottom line is that unless this thing is brought under dramatic control very soon, it will utterly overwhelm hospital facilities in short order, as it has already done in Italy, which by the way, has more ventilators per capita than many jurisdictions, including Canada and the USA. Quite aside from the dead patients involved here, spare a moment to think about what the medical staff immersed in this chaos will be experiencing.
4. This thing did not come from a biological weapons factory
In closing this rant I sincerely suggest that everyone here start listening to their public health experts, not their bloody politicians, and if you give even a particle of a shit about your fellow citizens, STAY HOME IF YOU HAVE ANY COLD OR FLU SYMPTOMS!!! This disease is often mild, but such infections can still be passed on to people it will kill. If your local jurisdiction imposes more general quarantine measures, they will almost certainly be doing so to control chaos in hospitals, so understand that not following the rules could well doom one of your friends or neighbours to a nasty and untimely death when no respirator is available when needed. OTOH, you might be the one needing the respirator. Even if you are only 30.
Couple of good reads if your stuck at home Cornbread Mafia
