Re: Overblown?
"On the other hand, outside of China influenza remains a much bigger threat and conferences are still held during influenza season."
Influenza has near total coverage of the globe and causes 250,000-600,000 deaths annually but a selection of treatments that are usually effective aside from late treatment or complications due to other health issues.
COVID-19 has coverage of maybe a few million at most so far, a higher death rate and we are still learning how to effectively diagnose, treat and contain the spread of the virus and the incubation period appears to allow it to spread rapidly through medical facilities rendering them significantly less effective.
I'm not suggesting that COVID-19 is necessarily going to be a massive pandemic but the longer we can limit the spread, the more time we have to discover how to contain and treat this. In particular, getting past the NH winter flu season will likely result in people self-isolating rather than just assuming it is influenza and continuing to spread the virus. While the southern hemisphere will still be entering winter flu season, the combination of a fraction of the population (~10%) in predominantly warm countries will likely slow the infection rate. I accept there are lots of assumptions, but most are valid for risk management purposes.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
