| Torillian said: Our local public schools in Ann Arbor Michigan have closed for the next three weeks and the university has switched to online courses for the rest of the semester. We've only had two cases in the state so I'm surprised the public schools acted so quickly, I was expecting them to wait it out another week. Someday I'd be really interested to talk to an expert on this particular virus and find out what about it made everyone take action so drastically. This is a much more notable reaction than I think the world has ever had for a single disease. Perhaps that's just because we have so much more information than we've ever had before, travel is easier than ever, or is this specific virus so much worse than Ebola or previous SARS strains that it required this level of response even if all other things were equal. |
It's the nature of exponential growth. That is scary. So a few cases now can mean hundreds in a week and thousands in two weeks. The earlier you stop the spreading, the better. Also, even if you bring down the rate of new infections, this is highly helpful to reduce the impact of exponential growth. This video explains that a bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg
Also, apparently shuttoing down Wuhan only a day earlier might have reduced the number of infected by 40%, as this article explains:
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
And the reason experts freak, is that the reproduction rate is much higher than normal flu, which means it can lead to situations where the health system is overloaded with sick people:
