I'm a critical care nurse. I know a bit about respiratory infections. I've been cruising the comments on a lot of these posts, and many of the things I'm seeing would be hilarious if they weren't scary.

One person absolutely shocked about the fact that the virus was transmitted by contact with someone's eye (that's totally normal for respiratory infections). Another worried that N95 masks didn't protect against nCov because the particles they're rated for are larger than the diameter of individual viruses (not having a clue what a respiratory droplet is).

This is seriously like watching the part of Outbreak where rumors, falsehoods, and blind panic spread like wildfire and get more and more disconnected from reality. The potential for misinformation and panic is huge.

If you aren't a medical professional or otherwise qualified to speculate, don't. Stop guessing out loud about the significance or potential of every poorly-written line from mass media reports. Don't hatch silly theories about what something really means or what's lurking behind the scenes. Listen to the WHO and the CDC. Let qualified people figure out what's actually going on. Don't panic.

• More people will be showing symptoms because the incubation periods that were not noticed before this virus was identified will be ending.

• Even if China has isolated the contagion perfectly, cases that travelled before the virus was identified will start showing as well.

• This will both inevitably mean that more cases will begin to show even if health authorities are succeeding in slowing the spread.

• Additionally, with any and every illness, only the most prominent cases will present to hospitals. Asymptomatic carriers and those who only suffer mild symptoms may never know that they ever carried or survived the virus. This makes estimates of mortality difficult to predict even as numbers increase.

• Because the symptoms are so similar to the seasonal flu and cold, “suspected patient” could be anyone who travelled to China and has a fever/cough/sore throat. Not every suspected patient is a high probability for testing positive - health authorities are being extra careful, which is good, but it will also lead to higher numbers of suspicion.

• Make no mistake this is a big health issue and a big risk, especially for vulnerable populations, and it isn’t as simple as the cold. It’s dangerous and seems to be very contagious, and the biggest risk at the moment seems to be the unknown factors of it. Listen to your local health authorities.

• BUT keep the inherent reporting bias and confirmation biases in mind as time goes on. It may be bad, but some of the increasing trends are to be completely expected as the days pass on.

• Also, it will be much more reliable to use health authorities as sources rather than news media, which may either be misinformed themselves, not give all the information (eg reporting deaths without reporting any other characteristics of the victims), or simply sensationalize for revenue.

https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/comments/etkiah/keep_in_mind_that_now_that_incubation_periods_are/