Originally Posted by
OldnGrounded
The good news is that, so far, it appears that only a minority (perhaps 20% per earliest estimates) of infections result in serious illness and the mortality rate seems, so far, to be <2%. We don't yet know what portion of that 2% received prompt and effective supportive care.
I don't think that's a particularly meaningful representation of the risk associated with this virus.
First, not all provinces are reporting outcomes (death or recovery) but all are reporting infections. Likewise only China has recorded deaths, and only Japan and Thailand have reported outcomes (all recoveries) outside China. If you concentrate on Hubei (which has been releasing information for a longer period of time) you'll see 249 deaths and 7,153 reported cases (or 3.5% rate of death). Another (perhaps better) estimate of the case fatality rate (CFR) would be to use only cases with known outcomes. In that case, the results are much more dramatic with the provinces reporting deaths showing from 10-100% CFR. Provinces that showing no deaths aren't showing many recoveries either. Hubei stands at about 60% CFR if you only look at known outcomes.
SARS, when all was said and done, had a CFR of around 15%. China reported a dramatically lower (around 9%) number of dubious origin. The Spanish Flu was somewhere around 3%. This is worse and I highly doubt China would've quarantined folks so quickly if this were as minor as a flu pandemic. It's nice to think that things are just that much worse in China, however I think it's just a matter of time. Japan didn't even bother quarantining the passengers on the repatriation flight.
There's not a ton of contrast, but the grey provinces are not reporting outcomes, the nearly white ones are reporting recoveries with no deaths. Well apparently not being able to post URLs includes not being able to attach images. I digress…