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It’s a combination of infectiousness and case fatality rate.

Covid-19: European Leaders Finally Acknowledge Scale Of Crisis
[DOUBLING EVERY 72 HOURS!!!!]
Sat, 03/14/2020
The disease is spreading fast: more than 28,000 coronavirus cases (93% of all cases) in Europe were confirmed during just the first twelve days of March. The number of new cases has been doubling, on average, every 72 hours.

“The threat is very significant... There are many epidemiologists who talk about the potential of the virus in terms of attack rates globally that could be between 50% and 70% of the global population.

“It is important to recognize that the virus is here and that it has tremendous potential to be disruptive, to cause high rates of illness and even high rates of death....

“I don’t think we are dealing with the flu here... this is a virus that is now circulating in a population that has absolutely no immunity to it.... You might have an attack rate that is three times higher than seasonal flu with a mortality rate that is ten times higher.

“The most concerning thing about this virus is the combination of infectiousness and the ability to cause severe disease or death. We have not since 1918 — since the Spanish flu — seen a virus that combined those two qualities in the same way. We have seen very lethal viruses — Ebola’s mortality rate in some cases is greater than 80% — but they don’t have the infectiousness that this virus has. They don’t have the potential to explode and spread globally....

“I think that what we are seeing is a virus that is many, many times more lethal than the flu, and a population that is completely vulnerable to it, and we are seeing its ability to explode. It has increased in some countries over the last two weeks by one thousand-fold and many countries are seeing ten-fold or one hundred-fold increases in cases. There is nothing to stop that expansion from continuing unless those societies move aggressively, engage their publics, implement multiple public health interventions, including introducing social distancing....

“We need to modify our behavior. We need to start practicing that now. We have to modify our behavior in ways that reduces the risk of transmitting the virus.... One challenge that we face is that people who are young and are generally healthy won’t perceive personal risk and they will govern their behavior based on what they perceive their personal risk to be. I think we need to start thinking in terms of the social risk. If I have a cold and I go to work and shake hands with my older colleague who has a chronic medical condition, I could be responsible for that colleague’s death. We all need to think about our responsibility to each other as we govern our behavior. We can’t view the epidemic in terms of our personal risk, we need to act collectively in a cooperative manner....

“I don’t think it’s a crazy analogy to compare this to World War 2... I think this is an appropriate analogy and the mindset that people need to get into....

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15729/coronavirus-europe-crisis