[jbay808]

There's a difference between "my honest prediction is that this is legitimately going to get way worse, because of X, Y, and Z", and "I feel a psychological need to pretend that this small problem is much bigger than the information makes it seem, because I like drama".

I've been watching Canada's medical system's near-total non-reaction to this situation. Basically the measures they have taken are to caution people not to worry to much or discriminate against Chinese people. Based on that, our throughput of travellers, and the fact that asking people if they've been in Wuhan in the last two weeks is no longer good enough to rule out cases, it's obvious that it's just a matter of time before Canada has a serious outbreak.

When I crossed the US border recently, all they asked me was whether or not I've been to China.

I think it's just realistic to acknowledge that at some point we lose the containment game, and that's very likely happened already. Maybe the long term consequence is a flu season that is twice as lethal. Or maybe there will be a very effective vaccine that eraducates the virus next year. Who knows.