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To me it is preparedness after it became clear that there was widespread community spread. There was a weird lack of contact tracing, folks were (and as recent at two weeks ago) not asked where they came from, no test or even asking for symptoms (unlike e.g. during the ebola outbreak). A number of countries initiated these measures and increased preparedness and among the community there was a sense that CDC and other agencies were starting just that. But then there was quite a bit puzzlement among my colleagues that have been travelling. And then it became clear that even countries who were producing the test kits were not stockpiling them. Manufacturers of PPE have reached out and asked whether they need to ramp up production but got no response (sure there are also financial interest there, but it shows that there was no concern as of yet). Structurally, it also showed that many lacked a decent pandemic response team. The US dismantled theirs, Germany assembled theirs end of February. And this goes to my general point, pandemic response needs to become a regular element of public health and an ad hoc assembly late in the game is likely not going to cut it. Regarding swine flu, there was a pandemic in 2009 resulting in 100-500k deaths. Any good response will look overprepared, because that is what they have to be.

What is says. That the effect of a given quantity of beta-endorphin is 18-33 times greater than the same molar quantity of morphine. Based on the results of a number of (rather unpleasant sounding) tests on mice. How much beta-endorphin is created by running? How much do heroin users take? To what extent do tests of physical reactions in mice correspond to "getting high" in humans?

"Asteroid (52768) 1998 OR2 will make a close approach to Earth on April 29. The hefty space rock has an estimated diameter of 1.1 to 2.5 miles (1.8 to 4.1 kilometers)" https://www.space.com/asteroid-1998-or2-earth-flyby-april-2020.html NASA has that range of values, too It's possible that the people quoting a diameter are using one of the endpoint values in that range. Some may be choosing the bigger value because that sensationalizes the reporting. P.S. It wasn't hard to find better sources than The Express.

Yes. But that isn't the point. The radius is 2.1 km. This article says it is 4km across (in other words the diameter is 4 km = twice the radius). Sorry. I'm wrong. They are all referring to the diameter. So I have no idea why they have the wrong number. Maybe you are right and they confused miles and km. Or maybe Ghideon is right and they copied the wrong number. Or maybe they got the number from an old version of the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=(52768)_1998_OR2&oldid=943951338 The size in that paragraph has bounced around all over the place, for no obvious reason.

It's not stupidity if you don't know something but if you ask that's wisdom. +1 The more you put in the more you will get out. Or The better you frame your question the better the answer you will receive.

Well, we already had plenty that did not originate there (as well as a few pandemics) and we will have plenty of outbreaks within the next few years. It is mostly the confluence of factors that make a disease more likely become a pandemic, which includes e.g. effective human-human transmission, long incubation time, late/difficult detection, outbreak in areas with high connections to rest of the world etc. This time a lot of folks dropped the ball which resulted in a rather unprecedented situation. The question is whether the next one (which will come) will be contained better or not.