Mate this is way more deadly than the flu... Let me explain my logic:
Using the information from the following site:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
There are 121,564 cases of coronavirus worldwide.
There are 4,373 deaths.
There are 66,239 patients that have recovered. This means there are still 55,325 patients that have not recovered.
The mortality rate assuming the remaining patients all recover is 3.6%.
However we know they will not all recover. If we assume no more cases of coronavirus and keep the current 121,564 cases constant and we extrapolate the number of deaths in the first 66,239 patients over the remaining 55,325 patients, we would end up with a mortality rate of 6.6% (expressed simply as 66,239/121,564). This would mean, keeping the number of cases constant, that we should expect 8,025 over the total 121,564 cases.
A 6.6% mortality rate is similar to SARS, the only problem however, is that SARS was less virulent... it affected less people....
This is not the flu which has a mortality rate of around 0.1%... Also in using the example from the US, they currently have a mortality rate above the reported average of 3% and are sitting around 4%.
Although I admit that it is much more fatal in the elderly and in the very young with most people being able to shrug off this virus, we have seen cases of otherwise healthy patients in their late 20's and 30's also succumb to this... we also all know young children and elderly people.... so extreme caution is necessary because they are significantly more likely to be affected....
We all have to be smart, stay away from people with very little physical contact... even at the company i work for, a large multinational with offices in over 50 countries, we are closing down for a week.... this is not normal protocol for the flu, these are initiatives being led by global governments... that tells me they know more than what we know... I sincerely believe that world governments have more information than what they are telling the general population to avoid mass pandemonium... people are already starting this though, with many stores in the US and Canada reporting dwindling stock of water, food and hygiene paper...
Obviously we don't know how many people thought they had the cold when in fact they had COVID 19 and didn't report their symptoms, that's also a possibility and that would decrease the mortality rate. If this is the case, the rate of community spread would be very significant I would imagine, which may explain what is happening in Italy... but given that the WHO has now classified this as a global pandemic, i do not think we should take this lightly given how overwhelmed the health infrastructure has gotten in every country with a significant number of cases... In my country, I read that the infrastructure did not stockpile ventilators, meaning they already are at the maximum, before a significant spread has even started...
Bookmarks