While The CDC And WHO Worry About Who's Flying Over The Water, Do We Worry About The Coronavirus Sailing In A Sealed Container On The Water?

It can take anywhere from 13- 40 days for cargo container ships to travel from various ports in China to equally different ports in the US.

Not being "Chicken Little," but what about all the millions of products that have been happily baking away in tightly closed containers on ships from China that have been sailing for weeks?

Who's taking the temperature inside the containers while the #Coronavirus is cruising across the Pacific?

If there are viruses still alive on products or shipping cartons in the containers, who is checking if the viruses are the same that went in, or have they evolved into real monsters that will exit out?

The Coronavirus mutates. Those tightly sealed containers that we usually see tipping over in one disaster movie or another have been on the water for some time. My concern isn't about ships quarantined in Chinese ports; the shipping industry is pretty much locked down. It's about cargo ships loaded with containers that have been on the water or just arriving at the US and other global ports of entry. What research or action, on a worldwide basis, is underway to protect against these containerized world travelers?

All-to-often, we bounce off walls from headlines (as I write this, the DOW is down, bouncing between negative 900 and 1,000 points), rather than digging below the "official" line. Flu still kills more people than the Coronavirus will this year. But there are big buts. We vaccinate for flu, but what's the plan to firewall a Coronavirus pandemic on top of one of the worst flu seasons in decades? With multiple strains of the virus playing who's on first, we haven't heard much about protections in place for container ships that are just arriving at their ports of destination.

I'm confident that the CDC, WHO, and global health officials are all over the human containment and quarantine issues. Still, I question whether the focus on human transmission has taken awareness and focus away from in-progress logistics and ports of entry issues. So, whom do we trust to give it to us straight?

We need to read reports from journalists who should be investigating and reporting on all aspects of the virus spread - not just human-to-human. In today's world of fake and intentionally disruptive news and bogus Internet news sites, it just may be that we must rely on trusted journalists. Journalists have always put themselves in harm's way to get to the truths, and, in my opinion, are the only ones we can count on to dig below the noise and find out the Coronavirus truth.

Here in the USA, the only people I trust to learn "what is," and deliver the truth vs. the sensational, are the real investigative journalists of the print media. We've lost thousands of journalists over the last few years due to massive newspaper closings. The journalists we still have are of vital importance. Some are still in the few remaining local papers, and in those publications that cover the globe. Good sources for real information are The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, The NewYorker, The Atlantic, even right and left-leaning publications, National Review, and the New Republic. My apologies to those I left out. Equally deserving for their integrity are the wire services that for decades have worked with print journalists and the publications they work for investigating and delivering truth over rumor: The Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News.

If we are to avoid a global panic, recession, virtual closure of international trade and travel, and learn of potential breakthroughs, it will be investigative journalists who keep governments and businesses honest, and the rest of us well informed.