[PokeyJoe]

I'm getting a rough mortality rate of about 7%.

Hmmmm.....

Is that right? Or is it higher?

[per loin]

I've been monitoring Hong Kong stats since it broke out there, and have the death rate in Hong Kong estimated at a minimum of about 8% of those hospitalized. I have charts and graphs of the Hong Kong epidemic posted here

[John Valentine]

The mortaltiy or better "lethality" defined as the ratio of deaths to total resolved cases (i.e. deaths plus recoveries, leaving out the sick whose outcomes are in doubt) yields a number between 15% and 20%.

Make no mistake this is a very serious disease.

[dangerdoc]

mortality rate is #dead/total infected. We have no Idea of how many have been infected. If 100 die and there have been 1,000,000 infected then the mortality rate is 0.1%.

This thing is basically a head cold from hell. For all we know, half a billion chinese have had this and kept on going.

The numerator is easy, the denominator has always been very difficult in epidemiology.