I found this in the article posted above:
”So the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China. Compared to Sars and Mers we are talking about a coronavirus that has a mortality rate of 8 to 10 times less deadly to Sars to Mers. So a correct comparison is not Sars or Mers but a severe cold. Basically this is a severe form of the cold.”
The response indicated that the deaths were likely significantly under-reported, as in: not counting the people dying while waiting to get into the hospital, or who never make it there. Plausible since there is both no incentive to report higher rates than confirmed, and not a lot of spare bandwidth to test cases already lost.
The real question now is which is more under-reported, cases or deaths. Either way, reading here details of the mechanism of death, it is far too virulent and deadly for complacency.
Looks like the prevailing approach is a very healthy Normalcy Bias.
Much of the rest of the world has sufficient capacity to hospitalize patients to prevent an outbreak. China being China is behind both due to recent industrialization and also an authoritarian state which lied about the dangers.
Take it how you want, but this is a severe flu which would not have survived in more industrialized nations.
Look at the mortality rate outside of Wuhan to see what the real mortality under a controlled environment look like.
If the rest of China looks like Hubei in a few weeks, we will be in pandemic conditions throughout all of China. If other countries start to look like China in a month or two, we will be in pandemic conditions throughout the world.
Your "if" is completely unfounded. Outside of China infections are not following any exponential trend at all.
The Chinese government’s senior medical adviser has said the disease is hitting a peak in China and may be over by April. He said he was basing the forecast on mathematical modelling, recent events and government action.
Dale Fisher, chair of the Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network that is coordinated by the World Health Organization, said that predicted “time course” may well be true if the virus is allowed to run free in Wuhan.
The flu-like virus has killed more than 1,100 people and infected nearly 45,000, predominantly in China and mostly in Wuhan.
Singapore has reported 50 coronavirus cases, one of the highest tallies outside China, including mounting evidence of local transmission.
[...]
Asked why there were so many cases in Singapore, he said there were comparatively more tests being conducted on the island.
“We have a very low index of suspicion for testing people so...we do have higher ascertainment,” he said, but added that there was a lot about transmission of the virus yet to be understood.
I'm not sure what to tell you. Unless you think that this virus somehow only targets people living in China, it's only a matter of time before it takes hold in other countries. This is not one that you can simply quarantine and isolate away like SARS. This one seems to be communicable at the earliest onset of symptoms, or even perhaps before.
What are your thoughts on this?
You may be a programmer, but certainly not a virologist. That’s not how that works.
Before a billion infected, well obviously. Flu infects about 9-45 million people a year, so there's a ballpark model. If we take 45M and 2% mortality as the worst case scenario - and really, it could be worse than that even. It's still a million deaths. That hasn't been seen since the Spanish flu at the end of World War I.
Traveling will increase the risk to become in contact with somebody who is infected.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51425702
Four adults and a child were diagnosed with the virus after coming into contact with a British national who recently returned from Singapore.
The five Britons, who stayed in the same ski chalet, were not in a serious condition, French officials said.
> We're at 2^15 and doubling every 5 days. If that keeps up for a month we'll be at 1M infected and 16K dead.
Obligatory: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/extrapolating.png
This is also math. But it’s not the way things work.
The fact that you are already planning to bug out, despite being on a different continent is also a little bit telling.
So I'm not going to just shrug and say it's no big deal. It could be. I'm a programmer, I know powers of 2 intimately. We're at 2^15 and doubling every 5 days. If that keeps up for a month we'll be at 1M infected and 16K dead. From there it's another 50 days to 1B infected and 1-2M dead. I'm keeping an eye on that, if it doesn't slow down before 2^20 (1M) then I've already planned to bug out with my loved ones to the mountains of Panama for a couple months until this blows over.
I think it won't come to that, but I'm keeping an eye on the progression and doubling rate. The thing with exponential growth is it always ends. The question here is does it end in time?