As a background, I am by no means a doctor nor do I have any kind of formal training with diseases and such.

However, I do have my BS in Physics, and I'm good at math. I can spot fake science from a mile away, and I can tell when so-called scientists are trying to hide something.

My current conclusion is that the economy should not be shut down. If people have the Chinese Virus, then they should stay home or at least wear a mask. If people are worried they might get sick and die of it, they should live in a bubble. But most of what we hear about the virus suggest to me that there are a lot of people either lying or hiding some essential facts.

Here's some questions I don't see answered and that causes me to doubt the entire thing.

1. False Positive rate (along with false negative): I've seen the study from China that suggests an 80% false positive rate with asymptomatic individuals. That is, if you don't have symptoms, and your test comes back positive, then there is an 80% the test is just plain wrong. I can't seem to find any data on the false positive rate for the tests they are using in the US, so I am left to conclude that it either looks really bad or they have no clue. Without a way to reliably test for the disease, they cannot say who has it and who doesn't. I'd like to see the false positive rate for symptomatic individuals as well.
2. Transmission rates, with people's adjusted behavior. I see that it is spread through the air and solid surfaces. Rather, it is spread through the soft tissues of the face or lungs via the air or solid surfaces. Great. I'm not seeing how many people get infected from a sick person now that people are washing their hands religiously and avoiding contact with each other. Those numbers seem to have stopped being updated now that people are being a lot more cautious. They're more than happy to tells us what happens if we never wash our hands and lick every solid surface and breath in the coughs and sneezes of the sick, though.
3. Mortality rates. There was a recent-ish study done in France that looked at the mortality rate and saw that it lines up with the number of people that would've died anyway from respiratory problems, and so it's not going to kill anyone that wasn't going to die anyway. Show me how many people die who wouldn't have otherwise died anyway. Don't show me cancer patients who have weak immune systems dying and claim that my family has anything to worry about. People who are elderly, sick, have cancer, etc... those people should probably live in a bubble if they want to live longer. Any disease is going to knock them out.
4. Hospital capacity. I'm not seeing any numbers here. Just some reports that some hospitals in NY are full or near capacity, and some reports that NY is missing some equipment Gov. Cuomo decided wasn't very important a while back. I am also hearing that hospitals are nearly empty in some places.
5. Why the heck do we need to quarantine people who have not been exposed to the China virus? This makes absolutely no sense, not in any way. You only quarantine people who you suspect might have the disease, and you set an upper time limit for how long they need to be in quarantine based on the nature of the disease.

If I were the government, and I wanted to convince people like me that they should stay home and stop going to work and avoid large gatherings, then I'd be advertising those numbers to give the story some weight. I'd be laying out all the scientific questions and answers, and explaining their conclusions with error bars. But no one does that.

This whole thing stinks and I am beginning to believe it is a massive fraud. Given the damage that it is causing, those who have perpetuated fake news or hidden essential facts should be held accountable. At the very least, let's drain their bank accounts.