Meanwhile, China looks poised to emerge strongly. It's stopped the Hong Kong protest in its tracks, knocked the US of its perch, and super-sized/normalised their surveillance network.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I work with people all over the world, every continent save Antarctica, and I have yet to know anybody who has the virus. It strikes me that perhaps we're being played to some extent. Something is up. It doesn't make sense to shut the world down for a virus that has such a low mortality rate.