by Michael Snyder, End Of The American Dream:

If the coronavirus is spreading this rapidly among hospital workers, what chance do the rest of us have?  What we are witnessing in China right now is absolutely unprecedented.  Despite the lockdown of major city after major city, this mysterious new coronavirus continues to spread like wildfire, and Chinese government officials are becoming visibly frustrated.  The number of confirmed cases has nearly doubled over the past seven days, and that is extremely concerning.  But even more alarming is the unofficial information which has been leaking out of China.  According to the South China Morning Post, “at least 500 hospital staff in Wuhan” have now been infected…

At least 500 hospital staff in Wuhan had been infected with the deadly new strain of coronavirus by mid January, multiple medical sources have confirmed, leaving hospitals short-staffed and causing deep concern among health care workers.

While the government has reported individual cases of health care workers becoming infected, it has not provided the full picture, and the sources said doctors and nurses had been told not to make the total public.

There have been numerous reports that indicate there isn’t enough equipment to sufficiently protect medical personnel in Wuhan, and that is probably the biggest reason why this number is so high.

But most of these workers are not completely unprotected, and this just shows how easily this virus can spread.

Ultimately what all of these workers probably need are full hazmat suits, and right now there aren’t many to go around…

A doctor from a major hospital in Wuhan, who requested anonymity, said the development had hit morale, adding that many medical workers were “devastated” when they saw the CAT scans of colleagues who had been infected.

“That is why we have been crying out for more donations of medical supplies, especially hazmat suits,” one doctor said, describing how a quarantine area set aside for sick medical workers was now full. “We have seen too many colleagues falling ill because of insufficient protection.”

Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang was one of the first to try to sound the alarm about this outbreak, and when the virus killed him it sent shockwaves all over China.

Here in the United States a lot of people are still not taking this crisis very seriously, but over in China people are literally dropping dead day after day.

And if urgent action is not taken, the same thing could soon start happening all over the globe.  In fact, WHO advisor Ira Longini just completed a study that concluded that “more than 5 billion people” could ultimately catch this virus…

In yet another sign of the World Health Organization’s about-face on the coronavirus outbreak, a top epidemiologist and advisor to the organization said Thursday that if the virus isn’t contained soon, it could infect 60% of the global population – or more than 5 billion people – echoing projections made by a Hong Kong scientist who was once labeled an alarmist despite his pioneering work in the fight against SARS.

According to Bloomberg, that’s what WHO advisor Ira Longini said after finishing a study of the virus’s transmissibility. His estimates suggest that the virus could one day infect billions of people, far more than the ~60,000 or so cases as of earlier on Thursday.

And he is far from alone.  In fact, Hong Kong epidemiologist Gabriel Leung is also warning that 60 to 80 percent of the entire global population could become infected.

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