The confirmed infection-to-death ratio was at 3% the other day, out of the hundreds of people you probably know most will have had flu, mumps, measles etc. in their life and not had that level of risk of death. Certainly the spread is considerably less currently and the ability now to identify and manage any cases is now getting better, but still it is serious and people do need to protect themselves and others by acting appropriately. For most folks that just means wash their hands, for a lot it means the same but also reduce unnecessary work travel to prevent potential spread. For a few who are at high risk due to medical reasons it means actively avoiding people.
Everyone is subject to daily risk, especially as cyclists if you cycle on the road, but if you contract this it will likely be the biggest risk most people will face, even as a healthy person. Thankfully significantly reducing the chance of getting it is very easy.
EDIT: we've actually just had a confirmed case a mile or so away from my office, and it looks like they attended a kids party prior to being confirmed. Fingers crossed it was not passed on to anyone there.[/Q
I think the point people are trying to make is that in every day life there are risks and things which might end that life. We take steps to mitigate those risks.
This is a new additional risk. At the moment it looks like it's about 100 times more likely to kill you than what we think of as ordinary influenza.
So to you use your figures. If the plain old ordinary one kills 20000 a year in the UK, if the new one spreads in the same way and infects the same number of people - we don't know at the moment how badly it spreads but with the amount of large scale disinfecting of stations and whole cities, presumably more so, then the UK could expect 2,000,000 dead in a year. Hence the need to maybe be a bit more cautious on becoming infected or infecting others - as you may already have it and accidentally be spreading it.
I think your hypothesis is flawed old mate! The death rate of the proportion of those known to be infected takes no account of the numbers who may also be infected but the symptoms for them are so mild that they shrug it off as a cold etc and are not tested. So the death rate is a proportion of those TESTED AS POSITIVE..a very different stat. The current global death rate includes a significant number in China who were very close to the origins of the virus and it is known that the outbreak started there in dec 2019 but few if any precautions were taken until late January. Many of the deaths there were among health workers and others who had multiple exposure to the virus. To look at it from a very different perspective, take a country fore warned of the virus and with good medical care facilities and a strategy to deal with the virus. The UK has 115 known positive test infected people the majority of whom contracted the virus on ski trips to Italy. So at nearly 3 months into global spread of the virus the UK with a population of 65 million has 115 known cases. Out of that 115 there has been 1 death.....a person with pre existing medical conditions. Clearly the number infected will increase. Many will not be sick enough to report their illness or get tested. A smaller proportion will be worse affected for a couple of weeks but recover with some medical help. A much smaller proportion consisting those at risk even from the more common corona virus or flu will be at greater risk. That is the pattern for any such virus and appears little different with this one. That by the way is what the UKs Chief Medical Officer is saying...not FB!!
