WUHAN, China — Facing growing pressure to contain a deadly viral outbreak that has spread halfway around the world, China’s ruling Communist Party raced on Tuesday to confront the disease, slapping restrictions on the city where it started and warning that anyone who hides infections will be “forever nailed to history’s pillar of shame.”

The response by the Chinese leadership, which has come under intensifying criticism that it has been slow to acknowledge the severity of the outbreak, came as fatalities from the disease doubled to at least six. Infections surged overnight from 200 to 300, and global financial markets were rattled by the possibility of a pandemic emanating from the world’s most populous country during the Lunar New Year — Asia’s heaviest travel season.

Already, cases of the pneumonia-like virus have been found in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea, and on Tuesday the first was confirmed in the United States. Airports around the world, including in the United States and Australia, are screening passengers from Wuhan. North Korea temporarily closed its borders to foreign tours, the vast majority of them from China. The World Health Organization has called a meeting on Wednesday over whether to declare the outbreak an international health emergency.

Love the thread title.

Is this one any more serious than the other flu viruses we've panicked about recently?

It’s spreading faster, it is prone to mutation, and they still don’t know the origin or the full scope of transmissibility. Hard to say about the mortality rate, because most of the people who have it at any given time just got it...so the official number makes it look lower than it really is. Some people think it might turn out to be as high as 19%.

Jesus

The earth could use a good culling of humans.

But I'm a human

Uhhhh Cloverfield internet