This corona virus is a serious and deadly thing. But why you not discussing the common flu and how many more people it infects and kills? How about the scam flu shots that the CDC is bragging about being45% effective on this years strain. It's a for profit vaccine. Should that not require around a 99% effective rate?
Influenza has already spread. The outbreak of influenza virus has already metastasized and is now characterized by seasonal outbreaks. H1N1 is swine flu, the very same strain which caused the original 1918 pandemic that killed 2-3% of humanity. It is well known now that most of those deaths were actually caused by secondary bacterial pneumonia in patients recovering from the viral pneumonia. This virus again spread to pandemic proportions and infected a fifth of the world in 2009 with a case fatality rate of 0.02% and a reproductive rate or R-naught of 1.4, that is, every ten infected spread the disease to fourteen more.
To compare that disease with this disease is somewhat useful, in order to give us a reference point. However, to use that as a reason to dismiss this currently spreading disease is pure fallacy. 2019nCoV is a nascent pandemic that still hasn't even peaked in Wuhan, which is the epicenter and site of infection of patient zero. It has not metastasized or yielded actionable epidemiological data. It's like comparing a baby to a fully grown warrior and saying the latter is far more deadly.
What we do know, is that the R0 is at least twice as high as H1N1. That's the low end estimate, from the cruise ship data, but it could be as high as 4. We also that the case fatality rate is at least a hundred times higher at a minimum of 2%. Actually, simply based on the total number of confirmed cases with outcomes vs total number of fatalities it would be as high as 7% which is three hundred and fifty times higher than H1N1. However, I would caution against calculating it this way because as I mentioned before, none of the outbreak epicenters have even peaked yet.
The JAMA study out of China states that 81% of cases are mild and that of the 19% of critical cases, a whopping 49% are fatal (suggesting almost a 10% CFR). However, the People's Republic of China has changed the definition of a confirmed case 6 times now and there are almost certainly far more cases than they have confirmed while their definition of a "critical case" may also be suspect.
Taking a look at South Korean numbers, we see an outbreak in the very earliest stages with a rapidly rising number of confirmed cases and still only 7 people admitted to the ICU. I would attribute this to aggressive and rigidly honest reporting coupled with rapid and accurate testing even before said cases have incubated sufficiently for said patients to have manifested critical symptoms such as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
Iran on the other hand has very few confirmed cases relative to its deathtoll. This is likely due to the outbreak there being much further along while testing has been dismally inadequate. The fact is, we still don't have a clear enough picture. I have stayed ahead of this for a month while people have joked or panicked. What is called for, is a calm but serious and impartial and nonpolitical view of this. Most epidemiologists are saying that this certainly has the potential to become the biggest pandemic in over a century by all metrics. The approach that most governments are taking is to try to slow the spread in order to give time to come up with a vaccine.
Epidemiologists aren't comparing this to influenza because that would cause panic. H1N1 has an R0 of 1.4 and a case fatality rate of 0.02%. 2019nCoV has an R0 between 2.4 and 4 and a case fatality rate between 2% and 7%. Vaccines are already being tested.