[sailfast]

Did it ever occur to you that if there is open / reliable information about the disease people might choose not to go out and/or engage in these conferences? The whole reason all of these cancellations are happening in the first place (MWC, etc) is because rational actors have decided (without government intervention and even with incomplete information) that the risks are too great.

Honestly my main concern in the United States is the complete and utter panic that will be caused by something that is only marginally less dangerous than getting in one's car to go to work each morning.

A government concerned with "not screwing up" can at times take drastic "emergency" measures with an overly cautious basis (at best) and with malintent (at worst), and we should be skeptical and continue to push for reasons for any actions. I don't see how this turns out to be a bug. They can have more impact on peoples actions with a press conference presenting skewed data than with any sort of attempt at straight-up bans or enforced quarantines.

[GVIrish]

> Honestly my main concern in the United States is the complete and utter panic that will be caused by something that is only marginally less dangerous than getting in one's car to go to work each morning.

If the fatality rate of COVID-19 is 2% as feared, that is dramatically more dangerous than getting in your car every morning.

The flu kills somewhere around 20-30k Americans every year. The common flu has a fatality rate of around .1%. So for something that is potentially 20 times as deadly, we're looking at hundreds of thousands of deaths. By contrast, car accidents only kill around 35k Americans per year.

[sailfast]

Absolutely. It's scary as hell in that context and I likely was typing that trying to cope with the reality.

I'm really hoping we get more data on this so we can figure out what's happening. With the lack of testing / confirmation and light symptoms it must be impossible for our science community to track things right now.