Yes, I know, facts don't matter to you guys; you just enjoy wqorrying yourself and as many others as you can gull, into mass hysteria. ; ^ )
My biggest question for this whole outbreak is: Why couldn't they pick a better name for the disease? Hoof and mouth disease, Legionaire's disease, Whooping Cough, Chicken Pox, and SARS... Maybe something like Metropole pneumonia. Anyone have other suggestions?
From what I have read the truth is somewhere between the position you seem to be taking and the proposition that the sky is falling. My ealier post in this thread [#3] pointed out that some discharges were occuring.
Secondly, before you conclude that only a few people are dead because this has been around for months remember the PRC has under reported, engaged in news black outs and generally lied about what is going on inside the PRC. Until independently verified, assume that any reported data from that source is at best suspect.
Until this got to Hong Kong it was simply not in a population that was regularly jumping on aircraft and traveling around the world. As soon as these conditions obtained, [a little more than a month ago] the disease started to show up in other countries.
Distribution of cases is very odd and appears to indicate that certain people / or certain conditions result in a high likelihood of spreading the disease. This is true of all contagious diseases to some extent but in this case the clusters appear to be a big part of the story. The PRC doctor / professor who was the apparent source of the infection in Hong Kong. The patient in Hanoi who infected more than 50 percent of the health care workers who came in contact with him. The elderly lady and her son who appear to be the focus of the Toronto cluster of infection. The Amoy Gardens cluster which appears to be related to a couple of visits by one infected individual.
Additionaly, the number of infections seen in travelers who have merely spent a few days in Hong Kong [versus the million who live there] appears to be significant. It could also be the total number of contacts, but Hong Kong as a whole is jam packed with people so it seems to me that the epidemiologists have sometime to work with here. Some transmission has occurred on planes, but most appeared to have occurred in Hong Kong.
From all of this I do not think that it is prudent to reach conclusions about the potential for transmission. It is simply too early and until we know for certain it is reasonable to assume that there is a real risk.
In any event, this is a nasty bug and a something north of 10 percent of those hospitalized in Hong Kong have required artificial ventilation. If they had not gotten this level of care would some of these have survived? Probably but a lot would not have.
Panic? No. Dismiss as trivial? Hardly.