The very simple fact that asymptomatic people can shed coronavirus

[intrepidity]

That alone means that this thing is definitely going to continue spiraling out of control.

Just ponder that for a bit: someone who is actively infectious may have zero symptoms. No fever. No cough.

How the hell do you even begin to contain such a beast?

As for China, I do not believe their stats. And once they start reopening their shut down, as people return to work, as trains and stores and streets begin to refill, I predict China gets hit again, hard.

All China did was delay the spread to the world, so insofar that other countries used the time wisely to prepare, their actions were warranted.

How many other countries could even take anywhere near the draconian measures that China took? Build a huge hospital in a week? Please.

I don't think overreaction is even possible at this point.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

1. Isn't that similar to tuberculosis?

Asymptomatic people can still be contagious?

[MFM008]

3. Yes

And Typhoid Mary.

[Mike 03]

2. We also have this new puzzle of people who have "recovered" becoming sick a second time.

Are those people contagious during the dormancy period?

We seem to know very little.

[dewsgirl]

7. Where are the interviews with those that have recovered?

This is my biggest question lately.
Surely there should be a few you would think.

[GemDigger]

8. Even after they have so called "recovered" they are still shedding the virus.

So their contagious period is at least a month. There are also a few reports about the second time is much worse than the first time.

[DFW]

4. Here in Europe

The place is so densely populated and the population is so mobile, we are pretty much resigned to the possibility that we will all get infected sooner or later, and just hope that only a minimal number will suffer severe symptoms and that only the tiniest percentage of them will turn out to be fatalities. Infections have already shown up just about everywhere I have been in the last two weeks. How could I NOT have been exposed already? Infection does not appear to build up immunity, as several cases have been reported of people from Europe to Japan who have been infected, gotten sick from it, recovered, and came down with full infections again.

[defacto7]

10. Hang in there, DFW.

We have family over there are we're watching and listening.

[DFW]

11. Thanks. We are vigilant as well. We have one 3/4 German granddaughter and another on the way.

They live down in Königstein, but both my daughter the baby's (soon babies`) father work in Frankfurt, and frequently have to travel to Viienna, Zürich, and London for work. Just this week, I was in Madrid, Barcelona, Utrecht, and a few German cities during rush hour. We'll all be exposed sooner or later, if we haven't been already.

[defacto7]

12. I don't know where you were in '58 and '68

But we've been through two other respiratory pandemics. We can handle this one too.

[DFW]

14. 1958 in Virginia. 1968 in Spain.

Catalunya, to be specific. We were told to watch for signs of hepatitis while in Barcelona, but that was about as close to getting something serious as I got.

[defacto7]

15. I don't know off hand where the regions of infection

were during the Asian and Hong Kong flu pandemics were but the toll worldwide was 2 million in the first 1 million in the second, 70,000 and 34,000 in the US respectively. As a kid they passed by quite unnoticed but my family was pretty concerned. Although oblivion could be bliss I'm just not one to ignore a hazard to my family. Kind of a role reversal.

[DFW]

16. In the part of Virginia where I was in 1958, we still had dirt roads.

Where I lived was considered a backwater at best. A few miles away was a dirt airfield that handled single-engine private planes. Where that was at the time, there are now shopping centers and huge fancy apartment complexes that house people that work for the government or some of the many big companies that have settled nearby. No longer the end of the world, the area is now "the Washington suburbs." When I was 6 (in 1958), where I lived hadn't gotten any national attention since the Civil War.

[Funtatlaguy]

5. Nobody laughing at my robotic girlfriend now, are they?

[Blue_playwright]

9. Lol

[dewsgirl]

6. Everything you said, is spot on. I've been following closely for the past

month. If they tried to quarantine us, half the public is armed, the other half would likely starve to death after their food supplies dwindled. I have no faith in them being organized enough to supply us with even food, like China has.(supposedly)
I always knew Trump's presidency would culminate in some kind of catastrophe...the last thing I had imagined was a pandemic.

[dalton99a]

13. If history repeats itself, look out: