Coronavirus / COVID-19

[Viking]

And how did they start to sense anything? Perhaps because they have seen or heard something in the media or from the government (in the same media).

Yes, as they should have, since it's part of the job of the government and the media to keep people informed of such things.

Oh really? I refer you to

People will panic buy until they are stocked up to a level they are comfortable with. Then the volume of purchased goods will return to normal, which should not take too long as most people are presumably not trying to fill their entire basement or apartment with goods.

Is it 1920 now or am I missing something? I believe that a hundred years that has passed since then must have brought some progress into medicine, no?

Until recently, as resistance has started to become a serious issue, bacteria were not so scary anymore because of the discovery of antibiotics. We have no antiviral drugs with equivalent potential:

Among the myriad infectious disease threats humans face from bacteria, prions, parasites, protozoa, fungi, ectoparasites, and viruses, it is viral infections that arguably constitute the biggest pandemic threat in the modern era. The replication rates and transmissibility of viruses are two major factors that underlie this threat. However, at least one additional factor plays an essential role: the lack of ‘broad-spectrum’ antiviral agents. Indeed, while bacteria can still cause substantial epidemics in parts of the world where access to clean water and/or antimicrobials is limited, the pandemic threats posed by bacteria, such as from the plague-causing Yersinia pestis, has been substantially diminished in the antibiotic era [1]. For viruses that pose epidemic risks, on the other hand, current therapeutic options are more limited.

Viruses, by their obligate parasitical nature, must use host cell machinery for many functions. Thus, antiviral strategies must be directed at the virus specifically with care to avoid interfering with host cellular function. As such, the number of clear targets per virus may be limited. By contrast, bacterial protein synthesis, for example, occurs via ribosomes that belong to the bacteria and are disparate enough from human ribosomes in identity that specific antibiotics can be deployed to target only bacterial protein synthesis. This unique feature of viruses, which derives from their very nature, serves to delimit antiviral therapies in a manner not applicable to antibacterial therapies.

Additionally, other characteristics of viruses serve as obstacles to broad-spectrum antiviral agents. These include differences between RNA and DNA viruses, vastly different virally encoded proteins across viral families, single or double strand genomic structure, cytoplasmic or nuclear replications cycles, and degree of reliance on host proteins.

Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Agents: A Crucial Pandemic Tool