Outside of China the worst hit countries have a little more than two dozen cases and there's only been a single death. It makes me not be afraid of this disease. My chance of getting it is crazy low and if I do I will likely just have a mild to bad flu.
Of course things can and probably will get worse, we'll see by how much.
But the reason for concern isn’t your chances of getting this virus today, which is extremely remote unless you’re in Wuhan. The concern is that China can’t contain this and it’s only a matter of time until it becomes a global pandemic, with the risk of killing millions and overwhelming medical infrastructures. There’s a reason so many epidemiologists seem worried...
- Out of 270 confirmed non-China cases there's still been only one death. That's a 0.3% death rate. Which raises the question, why is the death rate 2-3% in China? Are we sure it will be that high worldwide? Is it 2-3% because of something unique to the virus or something unique to China (i.e. a delayed response leading to overwhelmed health services).
- I think the histographs in the WHO situation reports (Fig 2 and Fig 3 in the latest one [1]) tell an interesting story which has gone largely unreported. Excluding the situation on the Japanese cruise ship (which is tragic but easy to quarantine), new international infections have been declining since the end of January. That's because the majority of non-Chinese who became infected got it in Wuhan. No one is going in or out Wuhan now, so those cases have basically dropped to zero, and other sources of infection are stable to down.
Obviously vigilance is important and the threat of an international spread needs to be taken seriously. But I think we should at least consider the possibility that this virus may have appeared more dangerous than it actually is because of a poor early response in Wuhan. And while the response can always be better, no one now is screwing up as badly as Wuhan did.
[1] Latest situation report: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...
Also, a lot of people that get this virus will just think of it as a bad flu and blow it off over a few days. They don’t get counted in the statistics.