Ebola came from Africa, swine flu came from Mexico/US, MERS came from the middle east, SARS came from China. So of all the bigger epidemics of the last year this is just the second from China. So your hatred directed at China is misplaced.

The plot thickens.... This was just on the news:
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076334/coronavirus-strange-pneumonia-seen-lombardy-november-leading

A “strange pneumonia” was circulating in northern Italy as long ago as November, weeks before doctors were made aware of the novel corona virus in China, one of the European country’s leading medical experts said this week.

It is possible and would explain why it's hitting Italy and Europe so hard. If you take the peak of 6557 new daily cases yesterday and calculate backwards with the expected growth rate of 1.16x, that's 106 days worth of steady growth from case 1. It would have had to have started on December 6th at the latest. Yet since the growth rate has been lower for a while November is very possible. The current 1.10x growth rate calculated backwards puts patient zero as far back as October 8th.

It could have fizzled out in Italy and imported back in, or perhaps it went under the radar, in the middle of flu season, until the right people got tested.

Except it doesn't. Go travel the world and learn what fringe means. Your explanation of libertarianism was decent until you mentioned Bernie and democratic socialism. Then it turned to random nonsense. Go ask the developed world how fringe democratic socialism or social democracy are. The US is the fringe one in wealthy countries with it's chrony capitalism. 

I'm talking about the world, not the US here so you are misunderstanding me. Still even in the US, the most liked, the most trusted senator most of whose policies are supported by the majority of Americans isn't fringe by any definition of the word.

A good weekend showing flattening of the curve across the board, or maybe testing is slower on a weekend. Avg growth rates are down with maybe a growth rate peak reached in Italy.

3/22 The avg global growth rate for the past 7 days was 1.14 and for the last 3 days or the current trend (1.03)

Ranking the biggest 10:

[02] US: 1.38 (1.16)
[09] UK: 1.19 (1.09)
[10] Netherlands: 1.19 (1.06)
[03] Spain: 1.12 (1.01)
[04] Germany: 1.11 (0.84)
[06] France: 1.08 (0.98)
[01] Italy: 1.08 (1.01)
[18] Canada: 1.06 (0.95)
[07] South Korea: 1.04 (1.06)
[08] Switzerland: 1.01 (0.82)
[05] Iran: 0.98 (0.97)

Between [] is the ranking on total cases found excl China. I included Canada, I doubt we have reached any peak yet, I expect slower testing to be responsible for the current drop in numbers. Widespread testing is not fully up to speed here yet. Switzerland also had a dramatic reversal, only half the number of cases reported today compared to yesterday. I expect it to be statistical outliers due to the weekend, but remain cautiously optimistic that the overall growth is indeed slowing down a bit.

Italy's slow down feels more substantial since the avg growth rate in deaths is also slowing down, 1.16 over the last 7 days to 1.07 for the past 3 days. Fingers crossed it keeps going down. There is still a long way to go to get over the top with currently 1600 deaths a day, half of the total from China every day, and 32K new cases found daily.

you people latch onto anything to try to justify Trumps actions huh? pathetic - yes, China has many severe problems and terrible diseases have originated there, yet not more than expected in such a populous country and your narrative that "it's always China" is nothing but a "feels over reals" reaction when looked at rationally

btw the thing that has hurt the world economy (you are soo concerned about) the most and the most frequently in the last 100 years is the US's addiction to the boom-bust economy of hyper-capitalism

Today (newest numbers) (denmark):

1,450 confirmed cases of infected.
254 required hospitalisation (17,5%).

55 (~3,8%) required intensive care, 47 needed ventilators.

Time will have numbers (%'s) climb abit, as things progress.

Sadly also 24 now confirmed to have died due to this virus here.

JUST IN:
-20,875 cases of COVID-19 in New York State
-78,289 tested in New York State
-25 percent of all coronavirus tests in the U.S. have been conducted in New York, @NYGovCuomo says https://t.co/xO9Z0EMv7a pic.twitter.com/IJdK82asHx

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) March 23, 2020

Damn.... they tested 16,739 people in the state of new york yesterday, and results point to +5707 new confirmed infected (in new york alone).

Going by that linked video in the tweet.

Go a week back, and Im sure many were thinking that Gov of New York, Cuomo, was over-reacting to the outbreak.
In hinde sight I think the way he acted as actually rather smart.