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You properly sneeze into your elbow, keep your hands clean and stay well up to date on the news on this viral outbreak. But how worried should you be? Should we hurry, or is panic completely unnecessary?

China shuts off its big cities to foreign countries. The Chinese stock exchange is in decline. The US, Russia and Hong Kong limit the number of visas they grant, the WHO issues an emergency. The fifteen Dutch people who were in Wuhan have been evacuated back to the Netherlands and quarantined. The whole world responds to the outbreak of the new coronavirus.

We want to know what this virus means exactly, where it comes from and how we should respond.

Ook de media reageren met hoge urgentie. Overal zijn liveblogs en er is een constante stroom aan breaking news. Want het is toch best angstaanjagend, en dus volgen we alle updates over dit gevaar. Maar we willen wel op de juiste manier handelen en daarvoor zoeken we context. We willen weten wat dit virus nou betekent, waar het vandaan komt en hoe we moeten reageren.

The media also respond with high urgency. There are live blogs everywhere and there is a constant stream of breaking news. Because it is quite frightening after all, and so we follow all updates on this hazard. But we do want to act in the right way and we seek out context for that. We want to know what this virus means exactly, where it comes from and how we should respond.

For instance, the Dutch broadcaster NOS came with a (Dutch) . Another example is the Dutch newspaper   answering the most important questions. The pivot? We do not know very much about the Wuhan virus yet. This is no reason for immediate panic, but you should be careful, the NOS and NRC explain.

We also contact experts for further interpretation. For years, THE Dutch expert in the field of epidemics is medical doctor and microbiologist Professor Dr Roel Coutinho. If a worldwide pandemic breaks out, Coutinho says in his recent book on pandemics and epidemics, this can cause enormous economic damage and undermine the stability of the world. We, especially in Africa, are totally insufficiently prepared for this. In the 2015 series 'Als het maar gezond is' (English translation: As long as it's healthy), Coutinho already spoke of the more and more often occurring epidemics and pandemics.

In a global world, far away can also be close

The MERS virus (also a coronavirus) and the Q fever had just been defeated at the time, but Coutinho warns for new threats. He explains how our fear of infectious diseases has changed in the past forty years. Why, after the development of antibiotics, did they return? What are the lessons we can learn from the HIV outbreak of the 1980s and the coronaviruses (SARS and MERS) of this century? He also explains what we can expect in the Netherlands if there is a new outbreak.

“In a global world, far away can also be close,” Coutinho already warned back then. If you want an in-depth story that has not been intensified by panic yet, you should watch this captivating  (Dutch).

Every week, a notable topical event is tied to a record from the  van Studium Generale - the knowledge & reflection platform of Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��.