Excellent academic explanation

This explains why everything is being closed down.

Feeling confused as to why Coronavirus is a bigger deal than Seasonal flu? Here it is in a nutshell. I hope this helps. Feel free to share this to others who don’t understand.
It has to do with RNA sequencing, ie. genetics.
Seasonal flu is an "all human virus”. The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system. This means that your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year. You get immunity two ways, through exposure to a virus or by getting a flu shot.
Novel viruses come from animals. The WHO tracks novel viruses in animals, sometimes for years watching for mutations. Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1)and (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once one of these animal viruses mutates and starts to transfer from animals to humans, then it’s a problem. Why? Because we have no natural or acquired immunity. The RNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus isn’t human, and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it, so we can’t fight it off.
Now sometimes the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human. For years it’s only transmission was from an infected animal to a human, before it finally mutated so that it can now transfer human to human. Once that happened we have a new contagion phase. And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, that’s what decides how contagious or how deadly it’s gonna be.
H1N1 was deadly, but it did not mutate in a way that was as deadly as the Spanish flu. It’s RNA was slower to mutate and it attacked its host differently, too.
Fast forward.
Now, here comes this Coronavirus. It existed in animals only, for nobody knows how long. But one day, at an animal market in Wuhan China in December 2019, it mutated, and made the jump from animal to people. At first only animals could give it to a person. But here is the scary part. In just TWO WEEKS it mutated again and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientists call this quick ability "slippery.”
This Coronavirus, not being in any form a "human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity) took off like a rocket. And this was because humans have no known immunity and doctors have no known medicines for it.
And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus changed itself in such a way that it causes great damage to human lungs.
That’s why Coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1, or any other type of influenza. This one is slippery and it’s a lung eater. And it’s already mutated AGAIN, so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain S and strain L, which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.
We really have no tools in our shed, with this. History has shown that fast and immediate closings of public places has helped in past pandemics. Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918, and they were the hardest hit in the US during the Spanish Flu.
Factoid: Henry VIII stayed in his room and allowed no one near him, till the Black Plague passed (honestly, I understand him so much better now). Just like us, he had no tools in his shed, except social isolation.
And let me end by saying, right now it’s hitting older folks harder. But this genome is so slippery, if it mutates again (and it will), who is to say what it will do.
#flattenthecurve. Be smart. Stay home folks. And share this to those that just are not catching on.

There are some big holes in this argument. This is not the first Coronavirus. It's COVID 19, so we've had experience with EIGHTEEN others.- including SARS and MERS. We've been dealing with these for a while. And to say that it is somehow different that this is a cross-species disease is a bit of a stretch. Ebola is such and there was no panic here in the U.S. In fact, we were bringing Ebola patients from overseas to our hospitals, and Ebola is absolutely lethal compared to MERS, which was far more lethal than this Wuhan thing.And H1N1 was also called Swine Flu. But there are other variants many of which come from birds as well..There are many cases of crossover viruses. The Spanish flu was a bird flu, a variant of H1N1. While the sequencing may be different they are variants on "old favorites" as it were. The human immune system is always encountering new things and has to produce antibodies that work. It's why young people get sick more than adults (who've been around long enough to acquire immunity to a lot of this.) But every flu strain that leads to a flu season is generally a bit different than the last, which is why we get sick. In other words, this isn't really that unusual. Viruses mutate all the time; it's why they are still around. Our immune systems adjust. As to the last claims about our having "no tools in our shed" that is demonstrably false. We have much, much better palliative care than did Henry VIII or even the folks in 1918. We have antibiotics to help with opportunistic diseases. And we don't have a vaccine now but are working on it. Oh, and it should be pointed out that vaccines basically give you the disease anyway, usually in an inactive form to stimulate your immune system to work out the cure on it's own. We know much more about Coronavirus 19 than we did about Coronavirus 1 and it should be much easier to develop a vaccine. Now I'm not saying this isn't a danger, especially if you have pre-existing conditions. But there is no cause for panic. Be smart, be careful, but live your lives. There is no good reason to think this thing is going to turn into the Black Death. It is not smallpox. It is not even close to the Spanish Flu. It has a very low mortality rate. More people are probably going to die from the way we handle this than from the illness itself. People DIE from economic collapse, especially in the Third World.

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