Can you justify this? I want to be convinced, because at the moment I think it's very optimistic. (There are different estimates for seasonal flu mortality, but it seems to be around 0.1%, so I'm assuming that's roughly the number you mean.)
So it looks like 2% is kind of the upper bound but that the actual rate will be lower.
You have to divide dead over dead+recovered, and outside of China those numbers are still too small to get a reliable number.
In China it is 2% outside Wuhan, but inside Wuhan it is over 4% since the medical system has broken down.
One more pandemic like the flu to contend with is also not a good idea.
The key metric that determines whether COVID-19 can establish and generate a sustained outbreak is it's ability to reproduce, "R", which represents the average number of individuals to which each transmitter transmits the virus.
- If "R" is greater than 1, the transmission may become sustained; - If “R” is less than 1, then the transmission will simply dissipate.
In the current outbreak, it represents an R of 2.2 [1], meaning that on average each patient has been spreading infection to 2.2 other people.
Only a little bit more than half of the infections should be avoided so that R falls below 1. Preventive isolation and the measures established by the protocols should be sufficient.
Besides, there is little evidence to suggest the presymptomatic transmission of COVID-19
[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.20021675v...
[1]: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.07.20021154v...
We need to stop comparing this to the flu. The flu is an established widespread virus with a very low mortality rate. This is a new, so far still spreading, virus with what appears to be a high mortality rate.
If you had to choose between being infected with the flu or COVID19 you’d chose the flu because you’re about 20 times more likely to die from COVID19 based on the data available at the moment.
If COVID19 has spread globally and becomes established then it will be similar in terms of deaths to the Spanish Flu. Nobody wants that and it is perfectly reasonable for people to be concerned about wanting to prevent that from happening.
If this does spread into a pandemic then you will be able to rightly come back in 24 months and compare the annual total deaths from COVID19 to the seasonal flu. Until then it’s an entirely incorrect comparison.