I work at a school in NYC and I got an accidental sneak peak at our coronavirus contingency plans. Things are starting to get serious.
SHORT VERSION:
The media are scaring the **** out of people about this. Yeah, it's a bad bug, it's all over America now, but enough is enough. It's absurd at this point. When this is all said & done, they'll find the true COVID-19 mortality rate isn't much higher than flu (maybe something like .3 or .4 versus .1. Certainly higher yes, but nothing insane).
LONG VERSION:
You're going to find (eventually) that the death rate from COVID is nowhere near as high as the 2.5% to 4% that the media loves to constantly report. That's a total BS number because it's simply based on
reported cases & known deaths. The reality is the "cases" are many tens-of-thousands higher, because there are people all over the planet now who thought/think they had/have a bad cold, and actually have/had COVID-19. And while it's easy to "miss" a COVID case, it's kind of tough to miss a bodybag. So COVID cases get seriously under-reported & COVID deaths are fairly accurate, which leads to an accurate numerator & an inaccurately low denominator = a mathematically over-exaggerated mortality rate which is breathlessly being reported by the media.
About that data, nobody should flipping trust the Chinese or Iranian data.
At this point the only data I trust is the South Korean data. South Korea is a free country with an advanced, modern, structured, healthcare system. They have a serious COVID-19 outbreak & thus a robust data set of cases. Guess what? As of yesterday, the death rate in South Korea is only 0.6. Keep in mind, there has GOT to be significant under-counting in South Korea as well for the aforementioned reasons. In other words, when this is all said & done, I doubt the COVID-19 death rate will be all that much higher than flu. COVID appears deadly to people >=65'ish and very deadly >=80'ish, but not so much in young healthy people (like flu). For instance, there are currently over 1,800 cases in S.K. in people <=30, and not a single person has died. Ya'd kinda think the media might want to let people know that, but of course, that doesnt get you ratings and marketing $$$$ - fear does.