Coronavirus
Out of context: Reply #147
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- Bennn2
"How Does the Coronavirus Compare With the Flu?"
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link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/…'''...The coronavirus seems to be more deadly than the flu — so far.
On average, seasonal flu strains kill about 0.1 percent of people who become infected. The 1918 flu had an unusually high fatality rate, around 2 percent. Because it was so contagious, that flu killed tens of millions of people.
Early estimates of the coronavirus death rate from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, have been around 2 percent. But a new report on 1,099 cases from many parts of China, published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine, finds a lower rate: 1.4 percent.
The coronavirus death rate may be even lower, if — as most experts suspect — there are many mild or symptom-free cases that have not been detected.
The true death rate could turn out to be similar to that of a severe seasonal flu, below 1 percent, according to an editorial published in the journal by Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane, of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But even a disease with a relatively low death rate can take a huge toll if enormous numbers of people catch it. As of Sunday, there were about 87,000 coronavirus cases and 3,000 deaths. This week, for the first time, the number of new cases outside China exceeded the number within the country...."