The coronavirus spreads a little faster than the flu.
You have some natural immunity to flu even though each season the strain is different. You probably have no immunity against this coronavirus.
We have a reliable vaccine against seasonal flu. We will not have a vaccine or effective treatment for coronavirus for some time.
Seasonal flu is very well characterized and understood. This virus is still under intensive study, and all the numbers I give have uncertainty, which means that it may be worse than our best guess. Long-term effects of catching the virus are unknown.
Also, my estimates from a few days ago were out of date and I did more research in the intervening time and found that the case fatality rate was probably lower than I was previously lead to believe (I did research back in January and then stopped for a while since it was draining to research it).
My current estimate that you can quote me on is that there is a 10% chance of the virus killing more than 50 million people [ETA: Update, I did more research. 5% is now probably my current estimate.]. I used language that did not reflect my probability estimates here as I used the word “plausible” but not in a sense that implied probable.
From this thread,
The coronavirus spreads a little faster than the flu.
You have some natural immunity to flu even though each season the strain is different. You probably have no immunity against this coronavirus.
We have a reliable vaccine against seasonal flu. We will not have a vaccine or effective treatment for coronavirus for some time.
Seasonal flu is very well characterized and understood. This virus is still under intensive study, and all the numbers I give have uncertainty, which means that it may be worse than our best guess. Long-term effects of catching the virus are unknown.
Also, my estimates from a few days ago were out of date and I did more research in the intervening time and found that the case fatality rate was probably lower than I was previously lead to believe (I did research back in January and then stopped for a while since it was draining to research it).
My current estimate that you can quote me on is that there is a 10% chance of the virus killing more than 50 million people [ETA: Update, I did more research. 5% is now probably my current estimate.]. I used language that did not reflect my probability estimates here as I used the word “plausible” but not in a sense that implied probable.
Can’t remember where, but I remember reading that for people in their 20s and 30s, the death rate is only 0.1%.