You know this is a contrived hoax when this sh!t starts.
Pardon the re-post, but:
I’ve been crunching available comparative stats up, down and sideways for almost a month now. The stats coming out of Korea, which has employed compulsory testing in infected areas (i.e., not testing only presumed symptomatic individuals), are clearly the most definitive to date; stats from China are junk; CDC has decentralized statistical tracking since labs throughout the states have stood up testing; and stats coming out of Europe are all over the place. I’m sure you’ve read the stories about Italy and their testing/tracking data.
Consider:
Number of pneumonia and flu-related deaths in the US since Week 40, 2019 - the “official” beginning of the 2019/2020 flu season: 88,902 (There’s a reason CDC tracks and associates flu and pneumonia; the relationship between flu and pneumonia has been acknowledged and studied since the 40’s, but the relationship is difficult to quantify since tracking is decentralized and reporting standards are inconsistent.) Annual infection rates of influenza are believed to be between 8 and 10 percent, based on hospital and outpatient visits.
Number of pneumonia and flu-related deaths in the US since Week 3, 2020 (When COVID-19 was first identified in the US): 39,212
Number of COVID-19-related deaths in the US since Week 3, 2020: ~8,800
Number of worldwide COVID-19-related deaths to date: 47,245 (Some believe that China’s statistics are understated)
South Korea (as of 4/3/2020):
Total Tested: 443,273
Total Positive: 10,062 (2.2%)
Total Negative: 414,303 (93,5%)
Number of Deaths: 174 (1.7% - 174/10062)
Active: 3,867
Recovered: 6,021 (~60%)
...and draw your own conclusions.