New virus has infected over 80,000 people, killed 2,700

My brother who lives outside a bigger city has started taking notice of the virus and asked me about it. He works for DOE and they received an email flash from CDC about the corona virus this morning.

I suggested no panic, just basic prep mainly for quarantine than actually getting the virus. Masks, extra food and restock your otc meds and prescriptions. I don’t think any one but Trump would actually tell us the truth.

It was 2% last week coring to my father-in-law.

When will we find out the real rate?

Not sure where your father-in-law is getting his numbers, but it has never been as low as 2%. When I started following the story, it was 22-24%, and since then has slowly trickled down to 9%. (Assuming China's numbers are accurate, which they certainly are not.)

The real rate is going to take months to come out. CFR is impossible to calculate in a lab setting, or from theoretical war planning. You can only get the real rate by allowing the disease to run its course in a large enough sample size, then look at the deaths vs the recoveries. Calculating it during an outbreak is very difficult, as small total numbers mean each case has an outsized effect on the statistics. And again, we need to use non-Chinese numbers, as China will likely be higher then average due to factors like high smoking rate, crappy medical facilities, and crazy high pollution levels. But, they publish fake (low) numbers anyway, so their rate is likely much higher than they say it is.

How to calculate the mortality rate during an outbreak

There is something very interesting about the outbreak in Italy. The region of Italy where the outbreak is centered has a high population of Chinese immigrants and guest workers who provide much of the labor for the garment industry

Also Italy is the biggest producer of rice in the EU. That area of Italy is where almost all the rice is grown so there are lots of farm laborers there.

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