Current situation is that the W.H.O. will not declare a phase Six pandemic, they keep changing the definition on the run.
Just hope we can keep it out of Australia for a few more weeks.
We still don't know the case fatality rate, we know that its below 1% when ventilators, Tamiflu and intensive care is available.
What we don't know is what the CFR will be when medical facilities are swamped and those technologies are no longer available. Bear in mind that the 1918 pandemic had a CFR of around 2.5%.
By way of example, assuming there is a 1918 style first wave in the U.S., that means about 100 million people get sick over about Three months. About 10% of cases currently require hospitalisation and intensive care.
That means about 10 million people will require intensive care.
There are only about a million hospital beds in the U.S. and around 150,000 of those are intensive care.
Do you now understand that it is not the lethality of the disease that is the killer, its the magnitude - the huge number of concurrent cases?
It's not going to be good for the airline industry either - passenger numbers will fall, but on a personal level the bug predominantly attacks younger folk 15 - 35 and I would imagine that a DAME would not like you to fly for at least a month after recovery.