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I don't think that all Brits are out of China yet, it's being organised, yes, but it's not yet a done deal.
It must be terrifying to look at absolutely everyone and wonder if they are going to kill you.
 
"It must be terrifying to look at absolutely everyone and wonder if they are going to kill you. "
Too right. It's bad enough when it's just your family you have to wonder about.
 
Steve Maskery":32wz39bv said:
......It must be terrifying to look at absolutely everyone and wonder if they are going to kill you.

Steve............160 dead out of 6000 infected. That's a death rate of one in 38*, and those are reportedly mostly elderly or ill. At the moment, this disease looks puny compared to normal winter flu. Do we evacuate a country when winter flu breaks out?

*The New Scientist is reporting a death rate of 4%.
 
I agree with MikeG, we need to see this virus in proportion, in context.
From a biological viewpoint, the fact that it has jumped species at least once, possibly twice, is of far more import than the raw casualty figures. This illustrates a genetic versatility that is much more (potentially) threatening than your 'average' coronavirus.

Sam
 
SammyQ":24p0jk3q said:
........From a biological viewpoint, the fact that it has jumped species at least once....

But is that not a standard feature of almost every single disease which has ever affected man? Bill Bryson in "The Body-A Guide for Occupants" says something like ' humans were almost disease free until we started living with animals', according to what I remember of something my wife read out to me last week.
 
I'm a general-, not a micro-, biologist Mike, so I cannot answer that definitively; but I doubt "almost every single disease" is animal-originated. I suspect Bill may be over-emphasising a theory about the origin of HIV from FIV and SIV and then lumping in the bacterial and fungal diseases that are a LOT more easily transferred across the species barrier than viruses.
We're animals too and we have a lot of human-specific viral diseases that are not found in other members of Animalia. I'd further remind you a lot of viral diseases are the result of 'natural' mutation and subsequent selection, that can transform them from base virus (relatively unimportant, but in a 'reservoir' somewhere) into a form that one (or more) species may be then be highly susceptible to. This can mean, harmless to humans before mutation/selection and harmful afterwards.
My cross-species comment originates in the selection necessary for a virus to thrive in one species; its genetic sequencing must be specific to that species, adapted to overcome ITS physiology/cytology and would not normally be viable in a different species with differing physiology and crucially, immunology. There ARE viruses that buck that rule, just ask any veterinary surgeon; but they are largely 'irritations' and controllable, not epidemic originators.

Sam
 

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