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SvennoJ on 13 March 2020
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vivster said:

The swine flu infected about 1 billion people and was found to be less severe than the seasonal flu. That is despite being much more aggressive towards healthy and younger people. You really expect this to be worse? This virus that is incredibly weak to a normal immune system and can be fought with soap?

Did you read the link?

Myth: You're waaaay less likely to get this than the flu 

Not necessarily. To estimate how easily a virus spreads, scientists calculate its "basic reproduction number," or R0 (pronounced R-nought). R0 predicts the number of people who can catch a given bug from a single infected person, Live Science previously reported. Currently, the R0 for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, is estimated at about 2.2, meaning a single infected person will infect about 2.2 others, on average. By comparison, the flu has an R0 of 1.3. 

Myth: The coronavirus is less deadly than the flu

So far, it appears the coronavirus is more deadly than the flu. However, there's still a lot of uncertainty around the mortality rate of the virus. The annual flu typically has a mortality rate of around 0.1% in the U.S. So far, there's a 0.05% mortality rate among those who caught the flu virus in the U.S. this year, according to the CDC.

In comparison, recent data suggests that COVID-19 has a mortality rate more than 20 times higher, of around 2.3%, according to a study published Feb. 18 by the China CDC Weekly. The death rate varied by different factors such as location and an individual's age, according to a previous Live Science report. 

But these numbers are continuously evolving and may not represent the actual mortality rate. It's not clear if the case counts in China are accurately documented, especially since they shifted the way they defined cases midway through, according to STAT News. There could be many mild or asymptomatic cases that weren't counted in the total sample size, they wrote. 


There could be many more mild cases around that skew the current death rate estimates, but that won't make it any better, probably even worse, since that means it has spread far further already. The death rate also depends on the availability of respirators to keep people alive. The critical care rate is still very high. (9%)