Actually, I am not the least bit concerned personally.

They have this kind of thing every year: avian flu, swine flu, SARS, MRSA, mad cow disease, flesh-eating bacteria, West Nile virus, ebola, etc.

Meanwhile, people carry on drinking, driving, smoking, drugging, overdosing and mostly dying from other stuff. In the end, life itself is fatal, so just enjoy today.

It's tough one. Don't forget the "Spanish flu" pandemic, it killed 50/60 mill when the population was 25% of what it is now.
At a time before mass international travel. At a time before airliners - the worlds most perfect pandemic vector.
Just 100 years ago

On the other hand, we don't want to get too jumpy. SARS etc have never surpassed normal epidemic parameters. Yet.
But my bet is that another big pandemic will come before too long, killing tens, even hundreds of millions.

Conflict and pandemics are the most likely factors that will limit our mathematically impossible (to sustain) exponential growth curve.
And this part of the world is ground-central both for newly morphing viruses, and for multi-drug resistant infections.
We're ripe.

Vote for more research and vigilance dollars, effective responses are possible and numbers can be limited - that's a fact too.

Coronavirus spreads to Beijing as China confirms 139 new cases
Two new cases confirmed in Chinese capital and one in southern Guangdong province amid fears of virus spreading over lunar new year
Agence France-Presse
Mon 20 Jan 2020 03.20 GMT

A mysterious Sars-like virus has spread around China – including to Beijing – authorities said on Monday, fuelling fears of a major outbreak as millions begin travelling for the lunar new year in humanity’s biggest migration.

The new coronavirus strain, discovered in the central city of Wuhan, has caused alarm because of its connection to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-03.

Wuhan has 11 million inhabitants and serves as a major transport hub, including during the annual lunar new year holiday which begins later this week and sees hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel across the country to visit family.
Coronavirus: China reports 17 new cases of Sars-like mystery virus
Read more

No human-to-human transmission has been confirmed so far but authorities have previously said the possibility “cannot be excluded”.

A third person was confirmed to have died, and in Wuhan 136 new cases were found at the weekend, the local health commission said.

Three cases have been reported overseas: two in Thailand and one in Japan.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... -new-cases

China confirms human-to-human transmission of coronavirus
Authorities on alert ahead of lunar new year holiday as 139 new cases of strain detected
Lily Kuo in Beijing
Mon 20 Jan 2020 16.41 GMT

China’s National Health Commission has confirmed human-to-human transmission of a mysterious Sars-like virus that has spread across the country and fuelled anxiety about the prospect of a major outbreak as millions begin travelling for lunar new year celebrations.

Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert and head of the health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected, China’s official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

Authorities earlier reported 139 new cases of the new strain of coronavirus over the weekend, tripling the total number of infected patients since the virus was first detected last month in the central city of Wuhan to 217.

Cases were confirmed in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong province in the south, heightening fears ahead of the lunar new year holiday, when more than 400 million people are expected to travel domestically and internationally.

State broadcaster CCTV said on Monday evening there were seven suspected cases in other parts of the country, including Shandong in the east, and the south-western provinces of Sichuan, Guangxi and Yunnan. Five people who travelled from Wuhan were also being treated for fevers in Zhejiang province.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... -new-cases

On scanners

While such scanners can be good at ruling out people without fevers, the CDC said, they have a wide and varying range of efficacy at finding people with fevers depending on environmental conditions and even the age of the person being scanned. The FDA approved the devices for use only with more conventional methods of taking someone’s temperature, such as a mercury thermometer or color-changing strips.

“Policy makers may feel some pressure to use [non-contact infrared thermometers],” said French researchers at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire. “]But the decision making process should not ignore the poor scientific evidence on NCIT’s efficacy to delay the introduction of a novel influenza strain.”

“The psychological reassuring effect on the public can influence the decision to implement such screening, as was the case in Singapore and Canada,” said the same study from Institut de Veille Sanitaire.

Jerry Atrick wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2020 1:50 pm What about SARS??
It was more a scare mongering news trend than an actual epidemic.

Same swine flu

Same whatever this story is also.

??