Yeah, I stopped worrying a few weeks back after I saw the mortality rate. It's basically a highly virulent flu with the same risk factors. Not on the same level as sars and the like.
If it's a virulent flu, the last time we had a pandemic with comparable stats was 1918, when we had much less global travel but much worse medical infrastructure. The 1918 Spanish flu infected potentially 1/4 of the world (500 million people at the time) and killed around 2% (variable depending on sources) of the global population - ~40 million.
It's on a different level than SARS/MARS, because this seems to incubate without symptoms in the young and healthy (for now) and then kill when it breaks out in populations of the old and sick. It's spreading faster and being reported differently than anything before.
Some basic advice that everyone should apply during every global outbreak they don't really understand:
- don't travel if you don't absolutely have to
- don't go to hospital unless you absolutely have to
- try to stop touching your face
- wash your hands and face frequently
It's a pandemic, definitely (source - me, I'm working on coronavirus). Don't panic but don't be complacent. Just look after yourself and your family and avoid exposure to potentially high risk.
It’s also not spreading unlike anything before? You can look at the graphs of SARS/MERS/etc and see at times it’s spreading quicker, but not remotely in the realm of never before seen.
Good advice I suppose, but traveling is still fine according to the WHO.
The public numbers are not the same as the ones on GISAID.
To be unemotionally pragmatic: the current World population could handle the death of 40 million, or even 400 million, without macro-disruption.
Edited: as my math was wrong, I had 500 deaths for flu when as @vatueil pointed out, it should be 50
Assuming the fatality rates are as given (3.2% versus 0.05%), that would be 3200 vs 50.