@AlPage48 I have seen photos of the Wuhan hospital construction on twitter, just the initial site grading on Jan 22. I gotta think 6 days is ambitious.

From WHO:

"On 10 January, WHO published a range of interim guidance for all countries on how they can prepare for this virus, including how to monitor for sick people, test samples, treat patients, control infection in health centres, maintain the right supplies, and communicate with the public about this new virus.

Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.

Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs. Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing."

Bat soup was not recommended.

Xinjiang Muslim restaurants were my choice during Chinese holidays. Don't know if any are operating.

@DanDare You are right to message to avoid the panic. SARS resulted in quite a bit of panic, a lot of advice, rumors, and fear.

Some of it was due to very little accurate information being put out. The World Health Organization, WHO, reported their opinion that the actual number of cases was far more than the official numbers. In a few weeks the central government demanded the reporting of cases be accurate and the number of cases exploded. It looked as if SARS was exploding but the truth was several hundreds of cases, unreported for weeks or months, were suddenly reported. The problem was that, over time, daily cases occurred at less than scary numbers. But when the published stats suddenly caught with reality with suddenly big jumps in daily numbers it was scary.

As the daily numbers became more accurate, the patient demographics were also published. I noticed that only about 10% of SARS cases were children under 12. To me this indicated SARS was not so highly contagious.

Most with SARS were elderly, worked in TCM hospitals or persons who visited relatives in TCM hospitals. Draw your own conclusions.

A doctor in Shanghai, a friend, who knew I had done business sourcing stuff for Chinese medical equipment companies asked to find and buy chlorine to be used as a disinfectant. I refused because the lead times were long and I figured SARS would be over before the huge quantities would be delivered in China.

Two days later she showed up at the school with a couple of guys and a car and whisked me away to a government office. In a couple of hours shopping on the internet I learned that nearly 100% of the chlorine used in the US was imported from China. And, there was a shortage in the US because China had banned the export of chlorine products. Some smart thinking bureaucrat had done the right thing but the badly needed chlorine was being held by another, less than smart, bureaucrat. Never mind, they drove me home.

Simply washing hands and avoiding crowded enclosed spaces works. Panic does not help.

Some good info here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyiHDbciNwI