It is extremely irresponsible to say this is not a big threat. At this rate, the death toll of Covid19 in the US is up to as big as 4 times the seasonal flu. In some countries the mortality will end up being more than 0.8%. Almost 1 in every 100 people dying because of a virus seems like a big threat to me, and it is already clear that this will be way bigger than the Swine Flu.
In case there are any CS PhD students at top colleges in the US reading this, I'd appreciate some advice: I am currently applying for a PhD in Germany (RWTH), and although I am excited about that place, I think I'd rather do a PhD in a top US School (for a couple of reasons that I won't detail here). The thing is that admissions for US schools do not seem to start before September, and in case I get accepted in Germany I'd have to decide whether to accept or not without having the opportunity to even apply for American schools. My question is about whether I'd have a decent shot of getting into such programs or not. Because if I don't then it makes sense to take an opportunity somewhere else before even applying there.
I'm a PhD student in CS at Caltech. The single biggest factor that determines whether you will get in is whether a well-known researcher writes a strong recommendation for you. I expect that it will be difficult to make the case to accept someone from a virtually unknown program like the University of Chile when there are so many qualified applicants from top American schools. Just to be clear, I'm not saying you are unqualified, only that you will have to compete with "safer bets" who look stronger on paper.
Really nice to see a fellow Chilean (I was born in Santiago but raised in NY) going for a PhD in CS.
I got a PhD from a public university that's probably considered tier-2 in 2018. I got rejected from every other university I applied to for the PhD program for but I learned a lot about how academia works in the process.
There's another post in this thread about making the jump across tiers into the elite university tier. They are right on the money when they say how hard it is and how much of it depends on who you know in the department you're applying to or who your references know in that department.
Being from a different country puts you at a severe disadvantage in the networking aspect of the application. If you really want to attend a top tier institution for your PhD, the most sensible path would be to get into a Master's program at a school where you have a few advisors you'd like to work under.
Once you're in the Master's program, you can do your best to impress them and convince them to take you on as a PhD candidate. Otherwise it's really really difficult to convince them to take a chance on you without knowing you personally.
Anecdotally, even at my tier-2 university it was an anomaly for a "stranger" to be accepted straight into the PhD track. The professors would almost never take a chance on anyone they didn't personally know or didn't have good personal references about. I can't imagine how it would be a tier-1.
Tl;Dr: Unless you make a big name for yourself in a specific area, it's nearly impossible to get into the elite universities without connections. If you're hell bent on doing your PhD at a tier-1, go into the same university's Master's program and build a personal relationship with whomever you want your advisor to be.
It is extremely irresponsible to say this is not a big threat. At this rate, the death toll of Covid19 in the US is up to as big as 4 times the seasonal flu. In some countries the mortality will end up being more than 0.8%. Almost 1 in every 100 people dying because of a virus seems like a big threat to me, and it is already clear that this will be way bigger than the Swine Flu.
What would you qualify as a big threat?