Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
For the longest time South Africa and most of Africa actually didn't have any cases. Just recently we were making fun of how people from other countries were panicking, but then we got 1 case, then 2, then 3, then 7, and now it's up to 13, and now people here are starting to panic. So far it hasn't had any impact though, although my university disabled the biometric access system because they decided having thousands of people putting their fingers on the same spot might not be a good idea when an epidemic is potentially about to hit. At least so far all our cases have come from europe, as far as I know there hasn't been any confirmed cases of it spreading locally. There's an unconfirmed theory that it doesn't spread so well in heat, in which case we should still be fine for a month or so, but winter is coming and then we might be screwed. The major concern is since we have a high rate of people living with HIV who are immunocompromised as a result, the mortality rate might be higher if we do lose control of it.
As for comparison to the flew, although this virus is not that deadly it is still quite a bit more dangerous than a regular flew. According to wikipedia the latest numbers are 125599 cases and 4605 deaths, which gives a mortality rate of 3.7%. This is probably skewed though because a lot of cases are probably going undetected, so the actual number of cases is likely much higher. Apparently Korea is quite good with their testing coverage, so just taking their numbers (7755 cases and 61 deaths) gives a mortality rate of 0.8%, which is likely much closer to the actual value. This is still higher than the flu though, which I believe has a mortality rate of around 0.1%, but I might be wrong. Also keep in mind that of those who survive there is also a percentage who develop severe illness requiring hospitalisation. For the most part a normal healthy person should be fine though, but if you have a weak immune system you might be in trouble. But although the panic is probably overblown it's still inaccurate to compare it with normal flu. The flu kills so many people because it's already everywhere, if this virus gets established in the same way it is likely to kill more people than the flu does. Although it might mutate to become less dangerous, because the more severe cases are detected and quarantined while milder cases are more likely to go unnoticed and spread further.
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