[11th_VA]

Every time someone brings up the 'normal flu' comparison, there's two things you are leaving out.

1) This Virus's MO is a viral pneumonia (and will potentially kill more) - that is NOT TYPICAL in the so called 'normal flu';

2) There is NO VACCINE for this virus - everyone in the world has the potential to catch this.

Let's say only 1% of the world's population died from this, that would be like 80 million people - many magnitudes larger than die from 'normal Flu'

[Vermont Lt]

I was using the flu as a comparison for the ratios only. I agree that this is far worse than the normal flu. Up there with SARs in many ways.

[DoodleBob]

This CDC report is an excellent source of normal US influenza data.

For the 2017-2018 flu season, the CDC estimated that 45MM people got the flu ("Symptomatic Illnesses"), 21MM sought tratement, 810k were hospitalized, and 61k died.

Thus, for that season, and assuming 330MM people in America,

-the raw mortality rate was 0.018% or 18.48 people per 100,000
-the likelihood of contracting the flu was 13.6% (45MM/330MM)
-the Case Fatality Rate was 0.14% (if you define a "case" as having Symptomatic Illness) or 0.29% (where "case"=seeking treatment) or 7.5% ("case"=hospitalization)