[Centaur]

Just received this from a friend who is an epidemiologist who had worked with Dr. Fauci some time ago. It explains a lot of the hubbub:

"There are many differences between this virus and its predecessors but potentially the most important is the case fatality rate. On the main stream media they call it a mortality rate which is a wrong epidemiologic term. A mortality rate is the number of dead over say 100,000 population. In case fatality rate is the number dead over the number infected. The usual flu has a case fatality rate of 0.1%. the swine flu of 2009, the rate was similar to that, but univariate rates are misleading. For the coronavirus the case fatality rate for young healthy people is probably much less than 1% however for elderly people specially what underlying disease is the case fatality rate may be closer to 15%. That is why it is so essential for the elderly, especially someone who is frail to avoid all contact. If the coronavirus infects 60 million Americans, upwards of 1.5 million will die."

[BDParrish]

It is a coronoavirus so it behaves like one. The second infection pathway using the ACE2 receptor explains why it is deadlier than flu in certain populations of infected.

I heard Dr. Fauci say that the CFR for flu was .1% but I do not know how he got that. Is it this year? We are having a very mild year for the flu, so I heard.

Anyway the overall CFR for flu is telling you that the germ is killing the vulnerable just like coronaviruses and flus always do. The Spanish flu ran estimated 2.5% or higher, because that includes all the youth patients who died. That is not happening now with COVID-19. A CFR of .87%, the figure out of S. Korea, reflects the additional people killed by the second infection pathway.