HN is really buying into the media hysteria on this one. I would have expected more.
I don't know if the hysteria is warranted or not, but at this point I'm convinced that it doesn't make for good HN discussions. People who want to discuss every development of this epidemic can find tons of places to do that already, including a plethora of subreddits focusing on various aspects of it.
It seems politics are forced to take the same kind of exceptional measures as in other countries for fear of being accused of not being responsible.
I won't mention the other topic, but it's the second time i've found HN lacking scientific rigor the same way the general public does. I guess it's the downside of being more popular..
Now it is true that old and fragile people should be worried about coronavirus, but judging from death rates, it doesn't seem more deadly than the flu. So why put fear in the whole population ?
also, most people only experience nothing more than a cold symptoms. Which means most people actually have an immune system able to fight this virus quite efficiently.
according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ coronavirus has 3k deaths over 86k, which is 3%. Or if you take the other metrics, which is 40k recovered, that's 3/43 around 7% death. still way lower than the flu.
as for my remark about immune system, my point is that the vast majority of people experience very mild symptoms. Which means that their body was perfectly able to fight back and produce the antibody, just like against the other flus.