This whole thing stinks to high heaven. At most so far 59 people have died, with most of them being in one nursing home in Kirkland WA. The media is fear mongering harder than ever to make orange man look bad. Schools and businesses are closing which is sure to send us into recession if not worse. Out of 330,000,000 people, 59 have died in the US and everything is screeching to a halt. Something isn't right here but it's fucking everything up. The economy was the best it's ever been in the history of our country and now everything is going to shit because of less than 100 deaths. More people probably die each year from skiing accidents. This is un fucking believable.
EDIT: I'm not saying this is a total hoax. I'm saying the media overreaction is making things way worse than they have to be. Panicking is never going to make anything better. If this is truly as bad as some of you are saying, I hope it justifies sending our economy into great depression 2 Corona boogaloo
Not to be rude, but you are part of the problem.
You have no idea what a "worst of the worst" pathogen is and pray you never do. A "worst of the worst" pathogen would entail complete inability of the human immune system being able to combat a new pathogen.
80%+ of people who get COVID-19 will either 1) Recover without even knowing they had the virus, or 2) Only experience mild/moderate symptoms comparable to a common cold.
And you keep bringing up R0 values, but your not considering everything about the virus within context. Its not R0 value high = auto death mode. There have been other pathogens throughout human history with similar or higher R0 values that didn't wipe out human existence. Simply citing the level of contagiousness is not enough. For example, a bad flu strain has an R0 value of 3+ and accounts for as high as 15% of all flu-related deaths in the 65 yrs of age+ older population. And the CDC currently believes its actually much higher than that percentage.