The most recent assessment is that the Wuhan Flu is much more contagious than ordinary flu viruses but is not quite as deadly.
“The most recent assessment is that the Wuhan Flu is much more contagious than ordinary flu viruses but is not quite as deadly.”
I thought it was the exact opposite.
It is more contagious and more deadly than the normal flu.
It is only 10x more deadly than the normal flu. .092% vs 2.4% as of yesterday.
Others will explain it.
We always get a burst of this stuff at the start of a thread. Don’t feed them and they go away.
It is more contagious than most influenza strains, with an estimated R0 of 2+ vs influenza R0 of 1.5. Whoever said it was less deadly was misquoted or misspoke. It most definitely has a higher mortality rate, and a significant portion of those infected end up in ICU.
Hopefully, the current efforts to slow and stop the spread will be enough to prevent a global pandemic. Then, everyone outside China can sit back and say, "see, not even as bad as the flu". I don't think you will ever hear those words in China, even though far more Chinese people die every year from influenza/pneumonia than COVID-19 has killed so far.
The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) is not an influenza virus. There are many different types of viruses that cause illness in humans and in animals and some are zoonotic meaning they can jump from animals to humans.
As someone here, I can’t recall who, tried to explain:
Think of viruses as car brands. You have Fords and Chevys and Toyotas, etc. Many different and distinct car brands and many different and distinct types of viruses.
So think of influenza as being a “Ford brand” and coronaviruses as being a “Chevy brand”.
But within each car brand, there are many different models.
With Ford, you have many different models ranging from the Fiesta to the Mustang. There are also different models and options within those models (think of those as mutations).
Within the influenza virus there are many different strains – A, B, C and D and within those various subtypes, just for example in type A alone:
H1N1 caused "Spanish flu" in 1918 and "Swine flu" in 2009.
H2N2 caused "Asian Flu".
H3N2 caused "Hong Kong Flu"
The coronavirus is a virus just as a Ford and a Chevy are all car brands, but belong to a different family of viruses than influenza.
Some coronaviruses are endemic and are responsible for a percentage of seasonal “common colds”, miserable to get but not particularly dangerous.
What is concerning about this particular coronavirus is that it is novel (not previous seen infecting humans) and with any novel virus we don’t exactly know how it is spread and the eventual CFR or if it will eventually burn out, if it is seasonal and likely to come back or if it will mutate into a less lethal form as the 1918-19 “Spanish Flu” did.