A traveler from China

                      just brought the new Coronavirus to Seattle

                                                   ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has officially confirmed the first known case of Wuhan Coronavirus within our nation’s borders.

Reports indicate that a traveler who had just returned to Seattle, Washington, after visiting Wuhan, China, where authorities claim the current Coronavirus outbreak originated, had to be hospitalized for what appeared to be a bout of pneumonia. This individual was later diagnosed with Coronavirus – and the CDC is warning that this is only the beginning.

As Coronavirus continues to spread across China, as well as into Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, the fear

here is that it will also ravage the West, which the CDC seems to think is inevitable.

As of this writing, at least 17 people have died from Coronavirus and more than 500 others have been confirmed as

being infected. Travel advisories are being issued in several other countries, but the U.S. has yet to take action.

Airline stock has plummeted in response to the news, with Delta dropping 3.50 %, United Airlines dropping 3.20 %,

Southwest Airlines dropping 1.5 %, and American Airlines dropping 2.50 %.

A number of resort stocks, including Wynn Resorts, Las Vegas Sands Corp., &  MGM Resorts International also dropped,

as investors are sensing that travel both here and abroad is likely to decline as Coronavirus continues to spread.

           Read further below,.....  It only gets WORSE !

                 Scratch that: 

Now they’re saying Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) has an R0 as high as 7.05

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The reproduction rate (R0) of the Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) – meaning the number of other people that one infected person could potentially spread it to – has been steadily rising over the past several months. Early on, it was

in the 1.0-2.0 range. Then, it changed to as high as 6.6. Now, the latest science says we’ve breached 7.05.

The highest level is 20.0  - (never achieved outside a completely controlled lab environment !) - The highest R0 can be attributed to Pertussis (Whooping Cough) with a Ro of 15-18.

What this means is that one infected person could spread the Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) to seven other people,

who could then each spread it to seven other people themselves. In other words, one infected person infects seven

other people, who then collectively infect 49 other people, who then infect 343 other people, who then infect 2,401 people,

.... and on and on it goes.

The R0 figure is important because it’s a measure of how exponentially a virus can begin to spread. A lower R0 basically

means that a virus isn’t going to spread out of control, while a higher R0 suggests that everyone needs to get prepared for

a major global pandemic – and the latter seems to be where the Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) is headed.

“Since the first cluster of cases was identified in Wuhani City, China, in December, 2019, 2019-nCoV has rapidly spread across

China as well as caused multiple introductions in 25 countries as of February, 2020,” a new paper published in the journal

medRxiv explains.....

               “Despite the scarcity of publicly available data, scientists around the world have made strides in estimating

                   the magnitude of the epidemic, the basic reproduction number, and transmission patterns,” it adds.

                      “Recently more evidence suggests that a substantial fraction of the infected individuals with the

                             novel coronavirus show little if any symptoms, which suggest the need to reassess the

                                                                      transmission potential of emerging disease.”

By reconstructing the underlying transmission dynamics of the Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19), the authors came up with a

more accurate R0 of 7.05. However, they also contend that the “enhanced public health intervention” imposed by communist

China after January 23 helped to bring that R0 down to around 3.24, along with a nearly 10 percent infection rate in Wuhan.

Listen to this video as [Mike Adams], the Health Ranger, explains how communist China has been manipulating the numbers to make

it seem like there are far fewer Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) infections than there actually are:

 Any R0 above zero means the infection rate is likely to continue increasing

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So, what does this all mean in terms of Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) risk in other countries like the United States? It’s difficult to say as health authorities are still grappling with new cases that continue to emerge on airplanes, cruise ships, and even in pockets of the world where there was no known recent travel to Wuhan.

Even a reduced R0 of 3.24, according to this study, is still higher than what the World Health Organization (WHO) initially estimated by putting it at 1.4-2.5. On average, we now know, the R0 is right around 3.28 for the Wuhan coronavirus, making it still a very deadly threat even if it doesn’t persist at 7.05.

“For R0 greater than one the number infected is likely to increase, and for R0 less than one transmission is likely to die out,” reports SciNews, which also covered another similar study that found the R0 for the Wuhan coronavirus (CoVid-19) to be higher than WHO estimates.

“When looking at the development of the CoVid-19 epidemic, reality seems to correspond well to or even exceed the highest epidemic growth in our calculations,” says Professor Rocklöv, one of the authors of this other study.