I truely agree with you

in india also we have 300 cases with 5 deaths and 20 recoveries

@249, I know exactly how you feel.. I'm more street smart than book smart, and I'm sure some look down on me for that.
I would like to think that the world, let alone society would become better after this dies down.. My hopes aren't high, but my girl reads me random acts of kindness and they give me little glimmers of hope. I wish nothing but the best for whoever can read this, and think of you all when I break down my herbal, and prey at night.. Am I preying to nobody? I guess we'll see. Someone very close to me nearly lost an eye, but they get to keep it and are going to see out of it nearly 20/20. Also my good friend got results from her biopsy that she is 100% Cancer free.. Those two gifts helped me to reaffirm my faith a bit. We just gotta keep our minds sharp and our heads on a swivel..

There are companies who are price-gouging.
And seriously, there is a special dark place reserved for folks who would buy essential items on the cheap and then try to sell them in a crisis. That is...I don't even have the desire to express how slimy that is.

This whole thing is so over-hyped that it's getting out of hand. The CDC has shown data that should give us all that we need to know with this. This virus, while dangerous, has only effected or killed a handful of people in comparison with the flu, which has now killed over 200,000 people this season. Why was there no panic about that? Yes, I know that this thing packs a serious punch and can kill people, but the truth is that there are thousands of other things that do more damage than this virus and our way of life has not come to a screeching halt over them. So, there's another virus floating around and it happens to be this thing called the Korona Virus. One thing to remember is that it isn't mortal to all who get it. Primarily, the elderly and those who have compromised immune systems are going to get the worst of it. Even then, there is a 98% cure rate, so there is nothing to be panicked about. There is no need to hold things like toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and other things of that nature. There is no need to have these shut-downs and such. In the end, we all need to remember that, virus or no virus, life goes on  and time stops for nothing. We need to keep living our lives in spite of this thing and apply common sense in terms of staying healthy. I've said it before, and I will say it agin. The real pandemic is not this virus, rather it is the way so many are reacting to it from the top down. Yes, I know that this thing has ben especially deadly in China and other countries. The thing to remember is that China has a population that dwarfs that of the United States and most of that population live pretty close together. Naturally, the virus would spread more quickly in areas like that. We can't start thinking that every country is going to have it as bad when not all living conditions are the same throughout the world. So, again there is absolutely no need for the level of panic this thing has caused.

@Jayde what is barbarism?
Also, I do hope this situation teaches society as a whole a lot of things. However, I'm not getting my hopes too high because if I know people, I know that in some cases, no matter what happens, people just don't learn and keep up their old habits that got us in this situation to begin with

262, you obviously are not  reading the cdc's website correctly. Covid-19 is different from the flue in many ways, for one, humanity hasn't encountered coronaviruses before, so we have very little in the way of residual imunity.  Second, even after that, covid-19 has an average mortality rate between 2 and 3%. Sit and think about for  a minute. The CDC is projecting that  almost everyone will be infected by the coronavirus. Do you realize how bad that death tole could be? In the US that would be more than 7 million deaths. Contrast that with the flue, which only has a mortality rate les than 0.1%, and for which the population has a residual level of imunity.
263, what would you have  us do about the virus then? The government isn't responsible for indviduals commiting acts of violence. Nor should they use the lockdowns as justifications for their actions. The people who do such things likely  had  previously done such things before, or had a genetic  disposition to crime or violence. The fact of the matter is, the measures being put into place now are really conservative compared to what has to be done.  Not doing anything, regardless of what the justifications might be, as the UK has done up to recently will result in a situation worse than Italy, where they had government run healthcare. In the US, we don't have that, so  the outcome will be much more worse.

Remember the fact that MERS and Sars actually infected a really tiny number of people compared to covid-19. They were nowhere near as infectious. The number infected is in the low thousands.

in our country India public curfew has been imposed for 14 hours today it has started from 7 AM in the morning and will continue till 9 pm in the Evening

@266, I honestly don't know. There really is no right way to deal with it at this point. No matter what is or isn't done, we're all fucked. I think that's what bothers me the most about this, the fact that I have to roll over and give up before anything physically happens to me. I've never felt so helpless and alone, or questioned the way my life has played out, or wanted so strongly to be with the one person who actually tries to stay positive while everyone else around me inundates me with a constant barrage of apocalyptic predictions or, alternatively, shaming me for the choices I've made over the past couple of weeks to not completely isolate myself. I don't know why I ever thought that this wasn't serious. It doesn't matter what your religious or spiritual beliefs are, though I imagine that atheists are at peace right about now. I, however, have too much unfinished business here. I've made tons of mistakes, I've wasted years feeling sorry for myself, I've destroyed myself both physically and mentally. And, naturally, just as things were looking up for me, it was proven that it was never meant to be. And yet, the world is ending, there's no doubt about that, even if it's a slow burn rather than a big bang. We're not all going to be obliterated by a nuclear blast, though of course that would be more kind. No, all of us who have sinned, or have karma to repay, however you want to look at it, are going to suffer in the most cruel, drawn-out way possible. No democratic government is equipped to handle a crisis like this, since it's never happened before. The people aren't prepared to take orders from said government, even if they did everything right and didn't use their influence to do terrible things, like racial profiling and unnecessary force. There is truly no way out of this where the individual wins, but, more importantly, whatever social structure, fragile as it is in this society exists, it's pretty much gone now. Everyone's the enemy, since literally anyone could be a carrier.

As I said, I would say it's a matter of keeping a clear head and neither belittling the threat, nor panicking like a fool.
No, the mortality rate in terms of   pure brute statistics is lower than something like saas, however the rate of infection is extremely high, and of course unlike the flue, there isn't enough a temporary vaccine.

Life is not a resource management computer game, you can't say "well I lost %2 of my population but hay, I still made it through that level." Since that two percent are people with human lives and families and connections to others, and might well include you or your friends and relatives.

That's why personally I'm focusing on getting through things, rather than prognostication. Yes, there will be some idiots, who panic buy or price gouge or the like, but there are also examples of people doing good things to cope as well, and in the end it's how we behave as individuals which will determine what happens on a social level, EG it will be far easier for governments to maintain social distancing rules if people actually do what they're told.

I remember once asking my gran what she did in the blitz, she replied "go to work, then go to the pub!" (she would have been 16 at the time), and now I think I know what she meant. .

On a larger level, I will say I do have some hopes that perhaps this thing will wake people up to the recent trends of factionalism, negativity and the like which the current culture has produced (largely I think due to corporate high handedness and lack of freedom, but of course as a socialist I would say that), but whether indeed this will happen, we'll just have to see, we still have the virus itself to deal with first.