If the US population were told to exercise good hygiene and we left it at that would the "epidemic" be any worse than a normal flu season? If I said the China virus would cause 30,000 - 60,000 deaths this year if we didn't quarantine would that be acceptable? Because that was the statistic for last years flu "epidemic".
219-22 U.S. Flu Season: Preliminary Burden Estimates | CDC
So where is the root cause for the panic?
The panic is caused because we do not know the numbers.
IMHO, if we did nothing and this virus raised deaths in the US by 250k, that would be tragic but "acceptable". 2,800,000 die every year now. So, less than a 10% increase. But we have no way to know what that number is going to be...so panic.
Also driving the panic is that unlike heart disease (that caused 650k deaths), someone can "catch it" and die.
Total deaths (by this virus) in the world is just under 20k...insignificant so far. My take...
We have been told this is "very infectious"
We have been told this has been present since at least Jan (3 months)
Death occurs within 2-3 weeks after first symptoms.
Unless we see a huge jump in deaths over the next 4 weeks, this is not the big deal we have been led to believe.
It is why I am only looking at the deaths....the number of cases is immaterial (unless we know the mortality rate but we do not)...but for sure the number of infected is higher than reported.
