First...
I laughed at that picture, Marcia!
That was good...
Now...
People, especially the WHO and CDC seem to be forgetting that we do not know if this disease goes airborne or not.
A mask of protective gear that is perfectly capable of slowing or stopping droplets in the air will be bypassed instantly by micro-particle sized viruses. That means we need to test this woman and quiz her as to her use of that gear if she is positive for SARA-CoV-2 precisely because she had that gear on. Did she fail in it's proper use? Was it only partially effective? Do others who wore gear near her have it?
People seem to be under the illusion (delusion?) that testing for a disease like this is valuable for medical treatment purposes. It isn't. The doctors will treat the infected for the symptoms they present with, regardless. There is no cure at this time. All they can do is see that, say, you're having trouble breathing and treat you with the correct level of assistance for that, to buy you time to heal. Or perhaps give you fluids via IV, so that you don't dehydrate and weaken your immune system. (These things make a huge difference in long term outcomes, but don't be fooled into thinking they need a test before they can be done. No one works that way. You treat to the patients presented symptoms, always.)
Testing then is to aid us in gaining a more complete picture of what is really going on here. Is this truly airborne? If so, then the R0 value isn't going to be 4 it's going to be a minimum of 10, to possibly 20-30. How long does this last on surfaces? We know that one to be 4-9 days, which is incredibly long...
But, with good testing we can find out how long this lasts, if there is a regular mutation rate, if we are seeing multiple strains already, and, finally, we can find out the actual death toll.
Right now, we are seeing an amazing truncated picture of that for this disease. People, trying to keep other calm, have been presenting this is most likely being much smaller in death toll, taking only older and ill people... But that ignores the fact that younger people who have been dying of similar symptoms have simply not been tests and therefore, not counted in the tally, when they die of this disease.
There are rumors of a sudden world wide increase in death from things which possibly could be this virus...
On top of that, historically, diseases which present with flu like symptoms (SARS, MERS, Swine Flu in particular, being modern examples form the last 20 years) are universally and ALWAYS under estimated in their death tolls at first. Why? Because a normal Doctor or medical practitioner will simply count the death as being from other things, in the absence of testing. It is only later, when the death certificates are reviews that researchers go back, wince and say "That one was probably disease-X. So was this one and..." (You get the picture.)
1. SARS- Originally thoughts to have a 2% death ratio. Later found to have a 10-12% after it was contained.
(Meaning the guesstimate was 5-6 times off of reality.)
2. MERS- Originally thought to kill 5%. Later it was discovered (in hindsight) that it was an incredible 30%.
(Meaning the guesstimate made by the WHO and CDC was off by 6 TIMES.)
3. Swine Flu. They thought 10,000 had died of it. It turned out to be 300,000...
(Meaning that they were wrong about the number of dead by 30 TIMES. Think about that... They couldn't tell that they had an extra 290,000 physical bodies, world wide, until later, when researchers had enough time and space to check the work of the people on the ground!)
Now, not every disease is like this. The experts do a great job estimating Ebola death numbers, for instance. Why are they so good with the one and horrible at the other? The symptoms. Ebola causes dramatic bruising, bleeding from the eyes and ears and coagulation in waves. It's very clear what it is.
SARS, MERS, Swine Flu and SARS-CoV-2 all present with flu like symptoms, which acts as a cover for untested people who are dying of them. On top of that, our death system around the world might handle 100,000 people each day. A jump of 3-4 times that is an incredible death rate, but the man or woman dealing with the bodies will only notice a small uptick in their business. If you handle 0-1 people in the morgue in your small town, but have occasion busy times with a few more, you might not really notice is that goes up to 4 per day. At first.
After a week or two you'll start to realize something is happening and if it goes to ten per day, you might not be able to handle things in you individual location. Now, multiply that by the WORLD and you can have a huge, rather hidden, death toll.
Also recall that most of these people have no one to directly report this increase to. There is no body to handle that sort of thing and the CDC isn't doing testing and they are done with the victims when they die...
*Before anyone panics, while the above is all true and factual, a thing you should check for yourself, it does not mean that the current situation HAS to be going this way. Only that it might be and in fact, given the track record for similar things, is likely.
This one could still "just be the flu, Bro."
Are you willing to bet your life on that, though?