Hahahahhahaha, nice work comparing car accidents with a potential pandemic.

the narrative leads me to believe that fatal car accidents are contagious. cough, cough, cough......hahahahha

@DanDare You are right to message to avoid the panic. SARS resulted in quite a bit of panic, a lot of advice, rumors, and fear.

Some of it was due to very little accurate information being put out. The World Health Organization, WHO, reported their opinion that the actual number of cases was far more than the official numbers. In a few weeks the central government demanded the reporting of cases be accurate and the number of cases exploded. It looked as if SARS was exploding but the truth was several hundreds of cases, unreported for weeks or months, were suddenly reported. The problem was that, over time, daily cases occurred at less than scary numbers. But when the published stats suddenly caught with reality with suddenly big jumps in daily numbers it was scary.

As the daily numbers became more accurate, the patient demographics were also published. I noticed that only about 10% of SARS cases were children under 12. To me this indicated SARS was not so highly contagious.

Most with SARS were elderly, worked in TCM hospitals or persons who visited relatives in TCM hospitals. Draw your own conclusions.

A doctor in Shanghai, a friend, who knew I had done business sourcing stuff for Chinese medical equipment companies asked to find and buy chlorine to be used as a disinfectant. I refused because the lead times were long and I figured SARS would be over before the huge quantities would be delivered in China.

Two days later she showed up at the school with a couple of guys and a car and whisked me away to a government office. In a couple of hours shopping on the internet I learned that nearly 100% of the chlorine used in the US was imported from China. And, there was a shortage in the US because China had banned the export of chlorine products. Some smart thinking bureaucrat had done the right thing but the badly needed chlorine was being held by another, less than smart, bureaucrat. Never mind, they drove me home.

Simply washing hands and avoiding crowded enclosed spaces works. Panic does not help.

"China's transport authority decided Thursday to suspend the passenger traffic into Wuhan by road and waterway in the country's efforts to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus."

www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/23/c_138729558.htm

My wife is part of a "community group" where we live at Yaolong Kangcheng in the north.
Last night their WeChat group received a message from the police liason officer responsible for the community.

A visitor from Wuhan who had been staying here for several days had started to show symptoms of the virus. He was transported to hospital by ambulance. That's presumably the nearby Calmette Hospital which has a separate building for isolation cases.

The further advice to the community was to avoid going out at all unless absolutely necessary.
We have no idea who the man was staying with so there may be other infected people in the community who have not yet shown symptoms.

From WHO:

"On 10 January, WHO published a range of interim guidance for all countries on how they can prepare for this virus, including how to monitor for sick people, test samples, treat patients, control infection in health centres, maintain the right supplies, and communicate with the public about this new virus.

Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.

Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs. Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing."

Bat soup was not recommended.

It won't be possible to contain this virus easily because it mimic the common cold or the flu. People habits takes a lot of time to change. Just this morning I was walking my dog and this woman kept spitting phlegm on the street. Yuk!

@Liumingke
The lady was applying a very good and proven method to keep you and your dog away from her and so stay free from the illnesses you might spread;-)

Good point! Ha. Ha.

So if you want a seat on the bus, just start coughing, and when the seas part, sit.

New confirmed cases in both Lijiang and in Xishuangbanna. On top of the three cases in Kunming. Bringing total to five in Yunnan.

I believe Yunnan Province has also joined Beijing and Shanghai in raising the public emergency safety awareness to the highest level 1, whatever that means.