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article said:
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to announce this afternoon that the first case of Wuhan coronavirus has been reported in the United States, in Washington state, a federal source outside the CDC tells CNN.
The source is involved in the matter and was made aware of a CDC media briefing scheduled for later today.
I think I can say without an ounce of hyperbole, that this is the most frightening turn of events in the history of mankind. I can't see any way how this won't end in a terrible and cataclysmic way.
I mean... the Ebola and SARS things were overhyped, but this time... it is for realz. We all ded!
Most epidemics don't become pandemics. But some do. And we don't really have any way of preventing another from occurring.
Bacterial diseases such as bubonic plague are not currently a threat, due to antibiotics, so we are at significantly reduced risk of a massively dangerous pandemic than was the case a century ago; Antibiotics can also significantly reduce mortality from secondary infections due to viral pandemics such as a repeat of the Spanish Flu of 1919-20. But nonetheless, a rapidly spreading deadly virus could easily kill half of humanity, particularly in this era of rapid international passenger transport.
Any given 'scare' will likely turn out to be unimportant - often because the WHO, and national level bodies such as the US CDC, take appropriate action to keep a lid on them. But there's plenty of plausible scenarios in which the lid comes off, and hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people die.
The 'Blue Fever' (aka 'Black Death') of the mid fourteenth century killed between 60 and 95% of people in it's area of effect, which was most of Europe and large parts of North Africa and the Middle East. It was probably bubonic plague, but that's not known for certain.
Spanish Flu killed more people than WWI did - and is mis-named, as it almost certainly arose as a zoonotic disease in Kentucky, USA, and traveled to Europe with US troop deployments to the Western Front. It's name derives from the fact that as a neutral country, Spain was one of the few places where reports of the new killer disease weren't censored during the continued hostilities of the Great War.
Every few centuries, a pandemic rips through humanity. We have some minor technological ability to mitigate some (but not all) of the possible future pandemics; But it's almost certain to happen again.
It's rather like living on the San Andreas fault - most quakes are trivial; And many technologies are in place to make even large quakes less deadly. But sooner or later, there will be a big one that kills a lot of people. It's inevitable. And so it's understandable that hints that 'The big one' might be on its way are big news.
Pandemic disease is (still) one of the largest threats facing humanity.
