2% or so fatality rate sounds a smallish risk until you consider that 2% of Chinese people would be getting on for 30 million.
I assume there are actually many more than 25,000 cases. So probably the cumulative death rate is less than 2% - on the other hand, it will continue to increase for some time after the numbers infected start to level out and before we see the true rate.
And I would expect the death rate to be understated too, because it will be based on confirmed cases. And there will be plenty of people with an interest in keeping the figures as low as possible.
So it's all just guesswork. Can the Chinese really successfully isolate a city of 11 million, and within that quarantine the known infected? Reports suggest not - ill people are being turned away from hospitals because there are no beds for them.
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