Spoke to my sister - she's a scientist - it's not her speciality but she'd just attended a briefing from experts. They said 'next week will tell the story'. She seemed to think the main thing was that it's a new virus so it has shock-value that goes 'viral'. There's an interesting metaphor between the two. She seemed to think that eventually it will just fall back into the pack of flu viruses that already exist.

I liked the comment from a Chinese netizen:

"Yeah all those rooms are prefab jail cells and nobody is asking why China has thousands of prefab jail cells ready to go at all times, which isn’t creepy at all and is very normal to have."