“That’s fairly on par with a typical season, and well below the CDC’s 2017-2018 estimates of 48.8 million illnesses, 959,000 hospitalizations and 79,400 deaths.
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So if you do the math the normal flu-virus we get here in the US yields about a 2% death rate. 1.65% by my math for the most recent period.”
Is this common core math? 79400 death / 48.8 million cases is 0.1654% CFR you are off by an order of magnitude. The WHO has COVID19 at 3.4% , the CDC says 2% the two viruses are not even in the same family of virus, and the COVID19 strain is novel humans have no immunity developed yet to it and artificial immunity is years away if ever with a vaccine. This bug is brother’s with MERS and SARS both are nearly identical coronavirus strains and those bugs have 9 to 30% CFR it would be a blessing to have this one only be 2% but it is in no way shape form or function flu it is completely disingenuous to compare the two. Comparing a novel strain that has under 8 weeks as a global spread to an.entire years worth of influenza cases is also completely disingenuous. This bug has an replication number or R0 of 2 to 6 with individual cases in the hundreds. Example the woman who infected the church in Korea or in the 20s for the lawyer in New York whose R0 for that cluster is 20 and still climbing. This bug is at least twice as contagious as flu if not six to 20 times as much, this is largely due to it being novel and everyone exposed has never been exposed before their body must mount a completely virgin defence.
I am amazed you have such faith in your stats since the virus has only been around for a few months yet we have years of stats on the flu.You must be completely clairvoyant to know what you know about a virus that has virtually no history.