Of course the virus is real and dangerous!
We have a woman in our church who was teaching in Wuhan. She said the devastation there is unbelievable. She got out of China on the second Canadian plane, then had to spend 14 days at a military base in lockdown and quarantine. She was finally released today, and is flying home.
She also reposts from a family of missionaries who decided not to return. They have been sealed into their apartment complex for 9 days, and also quarantined for many days before. Food is in short supply, they are learning to eat what they get. They can only order with one of 2 apps. One she had her cart ready to go at 10 pm when the app opened. She got a minute of error messages, then a notification that there was no food left, at 10:01.
People were sick everywhere, but now they don't know, since they can't get out. Only what they can see from their high rise apartment.
My son had a great job offer for Beijing this year. He would have taken his young children, and they would have had to go to a Mandarin school. The older one does speak Mandarin from his year in Hong Kong, and online lessons. But they decided not to go, and he got a good job here. When I first talked to him about Wuhan, he said I was foolish, because he would have been 500 miles away! He doesn't say that anymore since the disease has spread so much.
News said the health minister of Iran has Corona Virus. Iran apparently has a lot of cases. It would be interesting to track the spread of the disease in Iran, a quasi-religious dictatorship.
And South Korean, northern Italy!
As for Black Plague, it is a virus which lives in fleas which are in rats. The pneumonia type is spread by droplets from another person who has the disease.
I think for me, the big area of controversy is: was the virus manufactured or human-made, it was it naturally occurring. Knowing that would tell us a lot!