My husband is a career public health clinician who organizes vaccination clinics (has given out hundreds of thousands of vaccines for infectious disease, many for free via grants). At the state level here in US, he has mounted responses to H1N1, ebola, measles and now this coronavirus. The conventional wisdom around this outbreak, right from the beginning, has been that almost everyone on the planet will be exposed. It's no surprise this is hopping around stateside.

The virus has a two week incubation period, during which the host is not infectious, but also has no symptoms, making tracking vectors difficult. In addition, after incubation there are a couple of days where the host is highly infectious, and still has no symptoms. The term for this period is "prodrome" (pre syndrome). Under certain circumstances, it's also airborne, which is can be a problem for providers. It's spreading fast because of these characteristics.

Similar to flu, it is expected that this virus will find enough hosts to essentially never stop circulating. Expect to see it again next year, and the year after, etc, in perpetuity.

Get your flu shots! You might prevent someone from getting very sick or dying, even if you don't see symptoms yourself.