As I couldn't find any posts about this, I hope everyone stay safe and is going well. What do you think best and worse case scenarios could be?

don't worry about it. it is basically the flu. Don't wear masks in public; only in Asia, Italy, and Iran you may want to do that. 9 deaths in Washington state, but... all people with underlying health conditions. Those only at serious risk of dying are old people and already really sick people. People my age it will just be a common cold or a little worse than one...

Edited 3/4/2020 12:53:12

Working in an institute where colleagues are interviewed by the radio and television about this, I think I have a bit of an idea (although I'm not a virologist myself nor a specialist in infectious diseases).

Best case: it becomes as innocent as a serious cold / mild flu after a few weeks thanks to a combination of reduced transmission due to counter-measures (hand washing, avoiding large gathering, good information and education), a quick development of a vaccine and warmer weather slowing down its spread.
If a lot of people develop natural resistance by next autumn/winter, it's just a minor inconvenience.
In hindsight, most people dying are either old, had a history of respiratory or lung problems and more typically both. It turns out to have properties that are actually only be as deadly or even less deadly as a normal flu with the only reasons for the initial overreporting of deaths a combination of an underreporting of many cases with mild or even no symptoms and the fact that risk group of flu, who would die (or have died from flu many years ago) are typically getting a yearly vaccination against flu, and developed resistance over time against flu, but not against this new virus.

Worst case: The virus has actually been spreading a lot more rapidly than we now realise and many more people are infected than we know. Soon, it will start to ravage in Africa and less-developed countries where people have overall weaker immune systems and are more prone to have bad access to health care. Within weeks, the virus is killing millions, especially in resource-challenged regions. People distrust governments all over the world, new migration streams appear out of nowhere, vaccines efforts are blocked or sabotaged due to misinformation allowing the virus to continue its spread long into summer.
Rather than learning valuable lessons from the failure, the fallout leaves governments and health care systems railing and crippled.
By next autumn, a new mutated version of the virus appears that is near indistinguishable from a regular flu/cold in its initial stages but shows a potentially stronger resistance to medication and may be potentially more deadly for people without a history of respiratory/lung problems. If this mutation first appears in a less developed country or has a longer latency period (due to some resistance of people who already had the original version), it may go unnoticed for weeks infecting hundreds of thousands, especially if health care systems are still experiencing long-lasting effects from the previous outbreak. An extra curveball would be a mutation that changes the specific genetic sequences used in current tests to detect the virus, resulting in potentially a lot of false negative tests.
Misinformation and government cover-ups in countries with major elections (like the US) rock countries and lead to mass protests and riots (ironically ideal environments for spreading the virus...), stock markets all over the world experience their worst crash in history.

Other worst case: Another virus appears that is a lot worse than Covid-19.

Realistically, it's likely somewhere in between best and worst obviously, although I would like to stress that most probable scenarios are much closer to the best-case scenario.

Here’s a map: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6.

Whatever happens math wolf will continue to play every seasonal ladder

Edited 3/4/2020 15:42:19

The problem I see with such a shock like the virus is that there are other problems in the world which are currently more or less swept under the rug but which might pop up.

I'm thinking here especially about some companies with a bad capital basis and thus can't tolerate larger hickups in their income stream. They might not be able to refinance their debt while for the past 10 years or so they were basically bathing in liquidity. Those companies going bankrupt might lead to a ripple effect which might lead us back to 2008 again. For example Chinese companies going bankrupt could lead to the Chinese housing bubble to pop which could lead to civil unrest. And as for us Europeans Greece not being able to refinance their debt at basically 0% might lead to the European Union falling apart.

Edited 3/4/2020 17:21:21

Completely on a local scale, anybody else experienced panic buying? A recent (small) climb in cases in Australia has got some people scared and they started stockpiling things like pasta and rice, creating massive shortages in our supermarkets. The worst shortage, though, is toilet paper. 😉

yes LND! people around here (although NO cases in Missouri) are freakin' out and buying things like crazy! Agreed with Math Wolf!

I wonder if a possible "apocalypse" was ever used as a scam to get more business.

Yes, they're called televangelists.

Buy my doomsday bucket!

I wonder if a possible "apocalypse" was ever used as a scam to get more business.

In my country a dumb christian TV 'church' (read: scam) said to donate for a cure from god and to save your kids from Corona. So yeah, it is done all the time. Just the same with war, someone is always making money.

@Thanos haha!
@TBest yes, unfortunately there are people out there who use Christianity or the church to serve their own purposes; however, they are a minority compared to the rest of Christians. Unfortunately, because they are different, they get more attention, some people unfortunately extrapolate.
Anyway, this thread is about the Coronavirus, so I won't go into a religious debate about the corruptness of the Christian church. 😉

regarding the panic-buying, Australian supermarkets have now put limits on the number of particular items people can buy.

@LND The only panic buying I've seen is for masks... they've dramatically gone up in price. There was only one (now recovered) person who had the virus in my city.

Of note, panic buying and hoarding is not good for supermarkets, nor for the consumer.

There was an article about this on the Belgian news where it was explained that peaks in buying are good for the sellers when they can be planned, e.g. the Christmas spree or sales, but bad for everyone when sudden spikes appear.

The reasoning:
* empty shelves mean some consumers cannot buy or will go buy elsewhere
* the people who hoard will buy less afterwards leading to a reduction in sales and no net gain in sales overall (and potentially a loss if they lose consumers who go buy elsewhere)
* producers may have to adapt their production to match spikes, which is not easy when it comes by surprise - upping the production of machines (which may mess up maintenance schedules), not allowing workers to get a leave/take holidays, ... And similarly, they have to take into account that production may need to be lowered later - for producers a steady flow is easier and more efficient overall.
* prices may go up as a result of the temporarily increased demand because of the aformentioned production cost - producers will almost always let the consumer pay.

In summary, this is only potentially good for the largest supermarkets (with the largest stocks), although even for them it's typically a breakeven, and typically bad for smaller supermarkets.

Tip for the smart customer, note that it's ideal to buy in the downtime after hoarding has completely halted and everything is "normal" again - due to the decreased demand (hoarders won't buy) but largely unchanged production, there may be a surplus of products and supermarkets may give more (bulk) reductions.

and a man in New Hampshire broke self-quarantine and went to a big event.... people like that should go to jail or get fined if they survive

Edited 3/5/2020 23:37:54

Its not THE Coronavirus, its one kind of Coronavirus. There are many other out there.
The official designation is Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

none of you know how bad it is in hong kong

Price gouging is moral.

https://www.ksla.com/2020/03/05/panic-buying-blamed-hand-sanitizer-shortage/

don't worry about it. it is basically the flu. Don't wear masks in public; only in Asia, Italy, and Iran you may want to do that. 9 deaths in Washington state, but... all people with underlying health conditions. Those only at serious risk of dying are old people and already really sick people. People my age it will just be a common cold or a little worse than one...

From what I have seen, its ~4 times as deadly as the flu and is more contagious than the flu. Ofc, we won't really know the whole story until the oubreak is all said and done.

There are two possible outcomes at this point that I think are most likely:

1. It becomes endemic. In which case the general population grows a natural resistance to it and any new strains spinning off from it, in which case it just becomes part of the flu/common cold repository and loses its deadliness and potency (ie, spanish flu).

2. It burns itself out and dissapears.

As for now, since our bodies currently don't have any resistance to this pathogen family, if a new strain were to evolve that is much more deadly/contagious, there would be serious problems.

Edited 3/9/2020 00:56:18