So any individual who has returned from N Italy is being asked to ‘self quarantine’, schools with kids who have been skiing in Italy are closed, and yet in Lyon tonight there are 3000 people from Turin gathered together in a football stadium.

Can someone explain the logic in that?

So what is the source of this graph? Is it from the WHO? 

Yes and they think a pandemic is now likely and imminent.

Yes, it’s from the WHO and as Q should know it is good practice (and courteous) to reference any source used like this. Here is the original report https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200226-sitrep-37-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=6126c0a4_2 

i think the Italian rugby players and fans will also feel very offended. The virus will spread as naturally as any flu virus. No point trying to stop it. 

you must be so excited 

I'm guessing positively priapic.

The BBC are very slow with their updates . Latest cases are now up to 453.

It must be very disappointing for him that the number of active cases has dropped every day since the 18th February.

Yes, they have been very slow to update their confirmed territory list as well

Do you think government's would be isolating towns and cities for just flu?

People need to remember you can have a seasonal flu shot that really reduces the risk. There is nothing for COVID-19.

Thousands are dead, and still people joke about this.

Oh for goodness sake. Q has also posted on many occasions the good news threads that have come about. Yet again there is nit picking everything Q says. It’s pathetic childish playground games.

Symptom severity and fatality rates are similar to flu. 

Why should we panic?

There is no need to panic but its at least 10x more fatal than the worst flu outbreaks. Flu is about 0.1% coronavirus between 1 and 2%

With over a quarter of a million deaths (potentially over 600000) each year from influenza globally I agree it is probably premature to compare this new virus to the flu. Hopefully it (Covid-19) never reaches that level.

Covid-19

Covid-19

Any chance of using the correct nomenclature instead of a generic one?

Remember that flu would be higher without the vaccine given to vulnerable groups. Further, your quoted 1-2% mortality rate is still an estimate because of the number of mild cases that aren't even being identified.  I suspect that the rate is going to settle at well below 1% and even lower once effective treatments are identified.

But for those with pre-existing medical conditions and the elderly Covid-19 is clearly a threat and will until a vaccine becomes available, most likely not this year.

Naive CFRs are not mortality rates.

Whereas trotting out baseless conspiracy theories, questioning official data, misquoting figures and posting alarmist comments are all perfectly grown-up behaviours.  Fascinating.

I'll just remind you that Q is on record as saying Covid-19 was out of control in Singapore: it wasn't and never has been.  He also said there would be an epidemic across Europe by the beginning of February and 3-4 weeks on there still isn't.  

I disagree with your assessment of his posting record - most of what he posts is conjecture bordering on alarmist; that's when he's not being critical of other posters who challenge him.

That's simply not true.

Normal Flu does not kill health workers in their twenties, thirties and forties. Normal flu does not lead to fibrosis of the lung in such large numbers. Normal flu does not so agressively attack the immune system and lower white blood cell counts. 

Fatality rates are not similar to regular flu. 0.1% vs 2-8% (depending on how many undetected mild cases there are). 1-2 orders of magntidue worse in severity.

But it's scarcely an issue when there's so much uncertainty about the number of mild cases not being reported.

Once the professionals have the data we will know the real mortality rate and an idea of the distribution.  Until then it's guesswork and not worth nitpicking about.

And in MOST cases Q at this VERY early stage it seems that Covid-19 is relatively mild in a way that the flu usually is not. It is a different pathogen and we are still learning about it. Time will answer a lot of questions scientifically that are currently being addressed in other ways.

I said it showed signs of going out of control at the same time you claimed all cases had direct links to china when only 1/3 did. In any case that exact thing happened in Italy, Iran and South Korea. It's bloody difficult to predict when/where it will happen and I never claimed that I was always going to be able to call it right.

I do not recall saying there would be an epidemic by the beginning of February.

And I was also one of the first posters in here to comment when the cases in China and Hubei showed signs of no longer being in the exponential phase. I believe I did that in the first week of February. You selectively ignore half the posts I make so you can claim they are all alarmist. They arn't.

And ffs 'questioning official data'? You expect me to not question a communist dictatorship that runs concentration camps and literally spent the first month arresting and dissapearing people that spoke out about the threat of the virus? Of course I will question it.

It is an issue. If you use naive CFRs during the early stage of an epidemic to imply mortality rates you are going to get figures that are wildly unreliable. WHO has even thrown doubt about how many of these mild cases there are so we shouldn't even assume there are enough to cancel out the effect of the lag.

And if there are it is not good news because it means a large majority of cases have gone undetected which means an even higher R0 and more people eventually catching it.

If the mortality rate is 1% and it becomes ubiqitous then that would be devastating.

9 new cases for Germany today and their Health minister says they are at the start of an epidemic.