Quartz on 06 March 2020
I don't think it's a weak reponse from authorities - heck in the UK 2cm of snow and everyone runs to Tesco for milk and bread like the world is going to end!
On main point - the same site/source that you quoted has the common flu deaths currently in the same period at 87026 deaths with 520 deaths as of today (at time of writing). Yes you could argue that the common Flu has a current high infection rate to low death rate and is 'common'. It is really about Scale/Response/Resources to commit.
Each government/country will have the own threshold of response depending on the outbreak.
[Edit]
Here in the UK for example we have this: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid
Last edited by Quartz - on 06 March 2020Good to see this site is still going 
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