3 ms·

I think the Flu mortality rate is 0.1% and Coronavirus is 2%? That seems pretty dramatic, the earlier article about the disease in China stated that some perce

I think the Flu mortality rate is 0.1% and Coronavirus is 2%? That seems pretty dramatic, the earlier article about the disease in China stated that some percentage of people that get infected require ICU attention to oxygenate their blood or they die (and it doesn't seem like it's limited only to old or at risk people). That seems a lot worse than the seasonal flu? With SARS and MERS we got lucky because they didn't end up spreading that widely even though the mortality rate was higher. I'm not convinced that's evidence that this won't be a problem.

jacquesm 7y ago
The higher mortality rate of SARS and MERS - counterintuitively - helped to contain it, as well as the fact that it was only spread by people showing symptoms.
- dfsegoat 7y ago
  Not implying anything: But this tracks with my understanding of how USSR and USA wanted to select bacterial/virologic bioweapons [1]: An agent that killed very quickly e.g. Ebola is actually not a very good bioweapon. You want something with a long incubation period that is infectious before people are symptomatic. Things that incubate in short order + kill hosts quickly "burn the epidemic out" before it can spread. Ideally it also can survive outside of a host for some period of time as well. 1 - Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston