As for uninfected and/or asymptomatic patients popping hydroxychloroquine, zinc lozenges, or any of a dozen proposed prophylactic agents (prescribed or OTC) – sheer lunacy.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/928798?src=wnl_edit_tpal&uac=26807CR&impID=2349039&faf=1

As anyone who’s been following zoonoses knows, this is a very typical story. People tend to think – recall the initial days of HIV-AIDS, which turned out to be nothing but “initial” –– that these mutations appear out of nowhere and spread like wildfire, i.e., become pandemic diseases. That’s not the way it works.

Obviously there’s a helluva lot more we’d like to know but can’t yet know. But there is more than enough solid information to digest – I mean, too much of it TO digest. And what we already KNOW is, I think we’d all agree, very bad. So let’s stick with what we know …

I’ve heard news people saying something very similar today.

Going back further…

2/05/20: 500
2/10/20: 1,000
2/18/20: 2,000
3/09/20: 4,000
3/17/20: 8,000
3/23/20: 16,000

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Starting March 9, I’ve noted the dates when a doubling of total fatalities from COVID-19 occurred (global).

3/09/20: 4,000
3/17/20: 8,000
3/23/20: 16,000

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Too early to evaluate this. However, if – as your source article suggests – anosmia sometimes presents prior to sinus congestion – this might indicate early CNS involvement (= total speculation. on my part). If so, well – NOT a good thing.

At this very early state of. purely anecdotal information, my sense is that these symptoms (loss of smell/taste). should be considered consistent with any URI.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-symptoms-smell-taste.html

“As the coronavirus pandemic brings the country to a standstill, David Remnick and New Yorker writers examine the scope of the damage—emotional, physical, and economic. Remnick speaks with a medical ethicist about the painful decisions that medical workers must make when ventilators and hospital beds run out; John Cassidy assesses how the economic damage will compare to the Great Depression; and an E.R. doctor describes her fear for her safety in treating the onslaught of COVID-19 without adequate supplies.”

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3JnL2dvb2dsZXBsYXlfdG55cmFkaW9ob3Vy&episode=MjQxYTUyMWEtZWZhYi00NjBjLThmYjItNDNjOTZjMTUzMzg3

Dean, I’ve been modelling the Australian spread for the last week, and the accumulating infection data thus far have been absolutely consistent for the dates at which one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand, and one million cases are reached. In other words, the control measure that we’ve instituted to date have had no effect on a straightforward exponential rate of growth. That’s probably to be expected given that I’m likely still just tracking the infections that occurred before action was seriously taken, but I was hoping to see even a hint that the one million mark might be being pushed back (last night it came forward a day, but I suspect that might be noise…).

My model predicted 1,067 cases on 21 March – we reached 1073 identified on that day. It currently projects 10884 by 1 April, although I anticipate that the countermeasures will start to manifest and that this date will be pushed back from then. Currently it shows that it would take to 12 April and 22 April respectively to reach 100k and one million cases, but I’m certain that those are going to be significantly pushed back, hopefully by weeks and months respectively…

The thing that concerns me though is the current apparent momentum in the spread. Yet even this weekend there were thousands of people crowded on Sydney’s beaches – everything that our government is doing seems to be reactive to obvious problems that should have been resolved weeks ago. And they’re still encouraging students to go to school – with the numbers where they are, and unidentified infections likely to be much greater, children are going to be a prime vector for further spread, even if they do not suffer much from the infection.

It’s clear that conservative politics has a fatal flaw in its capacity for emergency response, when that response threatens the capitalist economic model. And the coronavirus response by conservatives exactly models in scale their response to the looming climate crisis, which will be several orders of magnitude more devastating to humanity, just as it is several orders of magnitude slower…

I take no satisfaction in telling the right wingers I know that I told them so when I remind them that I’d warned them about pandemic years ago (after SARS). They claim that I didn’t – the cognitive dissonance is profound. And when I then remind them of the climate crisis they still say that it’s not real, or that I’m exaggerating – these people just don’t seem to be able to learn…