ManBearPig had to come into it didn't it.

Anyway, "Will we ever eliminate infectious disease?". My opinion, nope! Probably be our ultimate end if we did. Like the old saying, What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

Frustrating that we can't really trust any information we're fed anymore. Boy who cried wolf effect.

My expectation with this one's that with quarantining effort it'll peter out like they usually do.

Jamo,

What've ya got against Peter? I'm not even aware he's got the coronavirus - he denied it three times.....Corona Beer, yes: virus nup.

Apparently there are more cases of influenza than the current outbreak.
David

Most viruses don't kill anyone, just make a few of us sick. This is one of those that do kill and do so without warning!

The fact that this particular virus was transferred from another species and can also transfer from human contact and from a seemingly healthy host!

Is what makes it a danger not to be taken too lightly by folk with no acquired immunity, i.e., all commenting here and making light of a problem not yet theirs.

Although it could be, some of it has already breached our alleged quarantine and is moving among us. And in folk with no apparent symptoms! That's what makes this one extremely dangerous!

If you feel unwell or are running a fever, don't tough it out, go and get checked out!
Alan B.

Just went and googled 'peter out'

The history of the world clearly displays that when ever any organism becomes completely dominant within any environment, something will come along and control it's numbers by using it as food. This has always been the case of every situation where plantations of cotton, oranges, or any other useful crop is planted in very large numbers in concentrated areas. There are antibodies to everything.

It can be said that the planet is now hideously over populated by humans, and if we take the earth as the victim, you could say that humans are the disease that is killing it. But sooner or later, some pathogen is going to take advantage of human numbers and use us as food. You could say that humans are the disease, and pathogens are the antibodies to that ever expanding disease.

The conditions are now just right for the introduction of a new sort of Black Death. In California, once considered one of the most fortunate states in the world, overpopulation is causing widespread homelessness leading to the streets of it's most prominent cities being littered with human faeces, with a growing rat population.

Throw in international air travel where people from very backward countries where human pathogens are still undiscovered, can come and go into advanced societies, and the human race is walking a tightrope. It is only a matter of time before we fall off.

According to the book "The Coming Plague", one such example of a previously unknown virus is instructive. It was known in Africa that a certain breed of very small monkeys inhabited ideal monkey habitats, and the question arose as to why bigger monkey species did not drive them out? It happens that these little monkeys are carriers of a monkey specific cancer that is airborne, and all a little monkey has to do is breath upon a larger monkey and it will quickly die of cancer.

If a little monkey like that ever breathes into the face of a human with a weakened immune system caused by AIDs, that disease could become transgenic, and woe shall betide us