You have to love how the media took this story and created a panic that will have lasting effects for everyone, regardless of the real facts. I'll be interested to see if anyone does a real study afterwards to expose the facts versus the BS. Meanwhile, the plain old influenza virus is killing just as many if not more at-risk people, as it always does, with nary a peep from the press or government. I've lived through all the previous pandemics and outbreaks going back to the 50's, and don't remember all this hoopla even with the much more deadly viruses like Ebola. SARS, MERS, Ebola, Ebola again, and all the others I can't remember off the top of my head, and we didn't shut down much of anything.
When they state the fatality rate as over 3% to scare us, they assume none of the people actually understand statistical analysis or even basic math. The only reasonably accurate number they have is the number of fatalities, they have absolutely no clue as to how many people have actually had the virus with only mild symptoms and fully recovered without medical intervention.
As an "at-risk" old fart I'll be taking reasonable precautions, but I'm not going to let the fearmongers force me into the bomb shelters. Unfortunately we all will be deeply affected by this mass hysteria whether we get the virus or not. Just think about the economic repercussions of shutting down huge portions of our economy for a month or more. We'll be lucky to get back to normal in six months to a year, and once again we will be hearing all the stories of people who lost their life savings, small and not so small businesses that cease to exist, etc.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the huge distortion in demand for certain household items. It will take a long time to refill the pipeline for commodities like toilet paper. I'm still trying to figure out what it says about American society when the most important thing to hoard is toilet paper.

JMHO - Rant over (for now) - Jerry