China coronavirus spread is accelerating, Xi Jinping warns.

I'm a depressing bug*er on purpose Mike, I do often take and write a pessimistic view of things, I've done it all my life, I always hope I am wrong I want the nice pleasant surprise I get when it turns out that the model I built in my head is wrong and I've been wrong so many times, in the late 1970s I was utterly convinced that I would never see the age of 30 because there would be a nuclear catastrophe a global nuclear war, I was wrong and what a surprise that was

Sometimes my kind of pessimism is a kind of alternative under the hood desire for optimism, inverted optimism maybe

Sadly this time that mental modelling exercise looks fairly realistic, the one real talent I have in life is the ability to construct complex visual models of systems in my head, that's why I'm a successful Software Developer because that kind of modelling is what programming is all about.

I am sad but not surprised that I appear to be right this time and that I saw it coming a long time back, but hey ho life goes on, let's spin the chamber a few more times and have someone else pull the trigger

I am massively relieved that from the close of business today we as a business are all working from home, no more need to go out at all and no more exposure to each others families and contacts, I'm down to me and the visit to supermarket

Italy was about 5% which is where we are hovering right now.

But now Italy is closer to a 10% mortality ratio to known infections.

Ah ok I see your point, that does not bode well.

I've already theorised on here that the increased death rate in Italy is due to the increasing lack of medical resources, pure speculation on my part though.

Alcohol has two issues one is that it impairs the immune system to some degree, and second it releases people's inhibitions and may result in behaviour like less strict washing of hands and less strict isolation from each other.

It has not been spelled out that one should not buy it in supermarkets yet but I suspect one would get a dirty look if you were to buy booze in a British supermarket now.

The chap in front of me at the checkout a few days ago was trying to buy 6 separate bottles of different beers he wasn't allowed to and only left with three meanwhile I had bought 1 slab of 18 beers and was able to walk out with them no problem

I am close to quitting drink completely now, they're almost all gone

You know the saying - a pessimist is never disappointed. In this day and age its hard to be optimistic.

None, we've done the conspiracy theories before

We don't need conspiracy theories to explain this.