Last night Pres. Trump spoke to the nation about the Corona virus epidemic.

Quotes: “I am shocked by the number of people who die from the common flu annually. ” The gist being this cannot be much worse than the flu.

Said “he did not think the virus’s spread was “inevitable.””  The intent: calm the jittery markets.  Attack Dems and free Press for raising alarms. I thought health care is about saving lives, not saving the stock market!

So I thought it was time to do some research (to satisfy my wife who asked) isn’t this just a bad flu?

How about death rates?

Influenza:

For 2017/2018 season  – the over all death rate/number of cases was 61,000/45,000,000 = 0.136 %

(Yes DT there are many thousands of cases every year)

MERS (a coronavirus)

Since September 2012,  2,494 confirmed cases (WHO)

MERS-CoV associated deaths since September 2012:  858

the overall death rate was 858/2494 = 34.4 %

For more: MERS Situation Updates

SARS (a coronavirus)

The sample’s overall case-fatality rate was 2.3%

but that depends a lot on the sample group: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coronavirus-fatality-rates-vary-wildly-depending-on-age-gender-and-medical-history-some-patients-fare-much-worse-than-others-2020-02-26

COVID19

Overall cases 72,000 (as of this writing); overall death rate is 2.3%

But the death rate is much higher in the critically ill and elderly:  49%

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate

How infectious are these viruses compared to one another:

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/how-diseases-spread/

I.e.  how many uninfected people (red) will one COVID-19 infected patient (yellow) infect?  Hope this helps.

MORE on the infection rate from a different source (probably more accurate):