Corona virus
The death toll from the corona virus has just reached 805 now 813 , 910 , 1013 on 12Feb with 97 103 deaths in China in 24 hours , making it a lot worse than SARS .A report published today estimates that there are over 75,000 infections which are estimated to double every 6 days . The good news is that the rate of infection can be slowed by 50% by wearing a mask which has more benefit in keeping your hands away from your face than anything else and frequent hand washing
HK academics have predicted that as of 31st Jan there were 151000 infected people . I just hope that they are wrong. The biggest issue with this virus is that the worldwide population as a whole has little or no immunity to it , having never been previously exposed. Air travel has massively increased the infection rate spread , made worse by the viruses ability to live on hard surfaces for up to 28 hours possibly up to 9 days .
The biggest problem is that despite the lessons from SARS the WHO and authorities in general have been sitting on their hands and were far too slow to address this pandemic and put in place effective travel bans.
so yes flu kills more people than this annually but the infection rate is exploding exponentially due to a lack of immunity which will lead to much higher mortality figures
Last edited by oriental flyer; 12th Feb 2020 at 16:59.