- Above all, we must do no harm. We don't shut schools every year for seasonal influenza, and we didn't shut them for the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, for good reason: The severity level didn't merit it.
The UK seems to have accepted the inevitability of the coming coronavirus pandemic and is encouraging people to prepare, but not to overreact (closing borders, large scale quarantine, food hoarding, etc). “The expectation must be that the virus will inevitably spread and that any local measures taken to disrupt or reduce the spread are likely to have very limited or partial success at national level.”
That is the most sober and realistic article I have read so far on how to prepare for the inevitable Covid-19 pandemic in the US. Unfortunately I think the government and general public are currently under-reacting and once there are large scale breakouts in the US they will start to over-react.
Prediction: Within one to several months from now, a disproportionately fast spread of coronavirus in America vs. other wealthy or Western countries will take place. Eventually, this will be directly linked to comparatively poor rights for the U.S. working class, but also a U.S. culture lacking in educational awareness of coronavirus. Russia has already worked to exacerbate this problem: I also arrived at a possibly-several-million-Americans estimate before reading your other comment somewhere else. I want to be wrong, but these transmissivity properties seem devastating. The long incubation period while apparently highly contagious, before the onset of physical symptoms, and there's probably exactly no existing resistance in probably any human population. S'not good. We don't have good non-Chinese statistics yet. So that's also, honestly, not making me feel any more optimistic. Sorry Xi. Roughly exponential growth is gonna be rough. I wanna be wrong. Everything in this post preceding this sentence, wrong. Just like with climate change, though, if you're even lurking Hubski, the overwhelming odds are that you're gonna be totally fine. I agree with what others have said: The worst prospect is that frequent mutations make coronavirus another common annual-ish threat, perhaps worse than mutations of the common cold and influenza. Don't eat pangolin, peeps.In February 2020, the United States State Department reported thousands of social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram) linked to Russia spreading disinformation about the virus. The stated reason was to "sow discord and undermine US institutions and alliances from within" and "to sow discord between [Western allies] and China". The accounts are run by humans, not bots.
I'm not sure Russia has done as much damage as our own mainstream media. Fox news has largely ignored the news and people like Rush Limbaugh have said that it's just the common cold and is being weaponized against Trump. The people least prepared for this seem to be the ones drinking the coolaid from that side of the political spectrum. "Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. (interruption) You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s… (interruption) Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks." https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/02/24/overhyped-coronavirus-weaponized-against-trump/ I think that this will most likely spread exponentially in the US and the people who will be most affected are the poor, working class (both lack decent health care) and the elderly.
Re: Russia and American "mainstream media", I largely agree, but I think you underestimate the current overlap between pro-Trump and pro-Putin political interests. The entire GOP has cozied up to Russia over the last few years. Is this where we sow the counter-disinformation oats that it was in fact Trump who engineered the coronavirus, to pave the way for cuts to entitlements like medicare and social security? No, no it isn't, because we're not pieces of human garbage, and he didn't. He likely couldn't: "cAronavirus" just happened: