Placeholder. Confirmed human to human transmission, but:
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I will say that with morning news in London bouncing between council elections and the hantavirus, and a couple of folks coughing/sneezing on the train to Heathrow, pandemic is on my mind.
Maybe I’ll be lucky and be required to self-isolate for the next 8 weeks once I’m home. That would spare me an upcoming week of drama with the inlaws…
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I could go for some wfh, but would like to avoid the whole lock down thing again this go around.
I must remember to stockpile some decent TP.
I recall a hantavirus epidemic in the mid-/late-1980’s in Western Colorado (where I grew up).
At the time, there was a lot of speculation about its source & treatment; but I think they were able to nail that down pretty well.
So I don’t see “pandemic” being a thing for this given that there is quite a bit known about the virus. I would be very cautious about media reports about “pandemic potential” on it as this is very likely going to be done for the click-bait/click-rage factor. (Not saying that every outlet has this as its goal–I trust the BBC–but even the reputable outlets will likely have journalist who won’t dig deep enough in their reporting.)
None of the articles I’ve read are calling this the next global pandemic. Virologists are quoted as saying this virus is SO different from covid and flu that they are not concerned about it in the same way. Headlines make it sound a lot scarier than it really is.
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All the same about clickbait, maybe we should forward it to our HR team who recently finished rolling out the latest RTO update…
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But it is a nice break from all the stupid Trump 
that would otherwise occupy the news cycle.
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The main thing about COVID is we were already half-expecting a coronavirus to mutate and kill millions of people. It was at the very top of the pandemic risks, and we were eagerly studying what would happen if a deadly version of SARS caught a very transmittable spike protein. We were searching everywhere for that virus, and even thinking about making our own, for some reason. We already knew that the high transmission, low death rate, and low symptoms could be a perfect storm.
We don’t really know much about this virus. We know it’s closely related to the Andes strain, but we don’t know a lot about that either. A couple poorly understood epidemics and some poorly understood genetics, and maybe some completely unknown mutations. The main reassurance is that on the whole, a random unknown virus is very unlikely to be as scary as COVID.
I’m hoping we can go straight to masks and avoid the shutdown thing this go around. Isolation protocols not followed in The Netherlands, a bunch of healthcare workers to isolate.
Confirmed case in Canada.
Are all of these cases from the cruise ship outbreak? I’ll be a lot more concerned if it’s verified that some cases are unrelated to the cruise ship.
Trump said not to worry about it. I think we’re all good. 
When do lock downs start?
Ugh, we already have hundreds of masks at home from the previous pandemic.