The Irish Health Minister said it was not worth risking.

he's right, but we don't know how this virus will act and he could be right, but he also could not be. And he's a total dickhead to risk hundreds of thousands of lives that way.

they weren't screening people returning from China. That's how this happened

It doesn't look good as 6 other nations had a positive test case from people returning from Milan. That tells me that Milan has a widespread infection.


Also, Italy will be underreporting cases because at least one region ran out of test kits

Public health tends to be a favorite area to cut

Or Korea or Japan, for that matter. Just today there are reports of a flight attendant who worked flights to LAX testing positive.

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/02/26/korean-air-flight-attendant-working-lax-flights-diagnosed-with-coronavirus/

If she infected someone in that airport who then went on to visit popular California tourist attractions, imagine the spread.

however, as of this posting, we are not doing that for Italy or South Korea

The number of cases inside China that have NOT been reported--anyone wanna guess how many they might be? Add a zero or two is my bet.

As for here in Europe, we are having cases pop up in "previously unaffected" areas (now including here in Nordrhein-Westfalen).

Wonder what's in store for us in the coming months? "Throw out your dead?" We are very mobile and very densely populated. Just in the last two weeks, for work, I have been in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and of course here in Germany. And that is a TYPICAL two weeks for me.

Maybe I should just go for an extended visit to a colleague who just retired--to Mauritius. Tomorrow, my wife leaves for a ten day trip to Israel with a German educational group led by an old friend of ours. I don't have time, but I guess I'd like to go some day. For once, I guess there is about an equal chance of her getting blown up or me getting the virus.

*on edit--while I was writing this post, the fourth positive case was just reported--in a town about 25 miles from here that my wife and I were in last Sunday. How very encouraging..........

I'm in good health, so unless a travel ban is issued, I'm going.