Coronavirus spreads. But don't panic! (topical thread)

[Deesse23]

Had the US not acted early with travel bans from Wuhan and then mainland China, like Australia did (and also NZ and UK) against the advice of the World Health Organisation, than the outbreak would have been much much worse.

Sequencing of the virus revealed that the east coast (which sums up the majority of cases) got the virus from Europe. The virus has mutated on its way from China to Europe and it was the european strain of the virus that hit the east coast.
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/north-america

Needless to say, travel ban from China was useless in this case.