I was surprised yesterday (Sunday) how few passengers were wearing masks from the midday China arrivals to YVR. AC 18, 26 & 30 landed and disgorged their passengers within 20 minutes each of other, and as I watched from the walkway above the immigration hall, I'd have guessed maybe a third of the arriving travellers wore masks. Those that did so were almost exclusively Asian. About one in ten arrivals coordinators (the staff in blue vests you see at kiosks and the base of the escalator in the hall) and one in six CBSA staff wore masks, although most of them wore latex gloves. I didn't notice any of the crew from any flight.

Outbound travellers showed the same thing: many China-bound Asian travellers wore masks, but few, if any Caucasians did so. The decision to wear masks (using an admittedly non-scientific basis of observation only) appears to be destination/origin based, and is practiced much more so by Asian people than people of other heritages.

It seems you're angry at the facts that the virus isn't really posing much of a risk to most people. I haven't told you what you should or shouldn't do; I've simply pointed out that healthy people have little to fear. Travel to Shanghai (800+ km from Wuhan) or to Beijing (1100+ km away) shouldn't cause a healthy traveler much concern. That it does so is a problem for airlines like Air Canada, who are obliged by the pressures of under-informed customers to create "policies of goodwill" and other such means to placate the fearful. Other, older viruses spread just as rapidly as this new one, with far more deadly results, and yet the concern seems absent without our news sources telling us we should be afraid.