Coronavirus is name given to a family of viruses, it includes the common cold, Influenza, SARS, MERS, and now Covid-19. Despite being part of the same family they are all different strains. With different effects in regards of virulence and mortality rates.
The common cold is extremely virulent with Billions of people getting infected but has a minuscule mortality rate, usually with those that have a non existent immune system and babies who go on to develop pneumonia which is what actually kills them.
In the U.S. alone, the flu has caused an estimated 32 million illnesses, 310,000 hospitalizations and 18,000 deaths this season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). around 0.2 % mortality.
livescience.com/new-coronav...
It has recently been posted that MERS has the same "transmission ratio as Coronavirus", which is in itself a nonsensical statement, MERS is a Coronavirus. Let us look at the figures for MERS though. To date, there have been 837 cases of MERS, with a mortality rate of 35% and confirmed spread within the Middle East and imported cases in Europe, it did not itself spread through Europe, nor the US.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
In 2003 with SARS, there was 8,096 persons infected with probable SARS resulting in 774 deaths, a 9% mortality rate. It has since mutated harmlessly and faded out.
cdc.gov/about/history/sars/...
So far with Covid-19, to date, about 89,198 people have been infected, with cases in more than 50 countries. More than 3,048 people have died, a mortality rate of 2.5%. Of course those are not the final figures for Covid-19.
livescience.com/new-china-c...
Although they are all related, from the same family, they are all different strains and cannot be compared to one another on their effects, with completely different infection and mortality rates on the human population.
Those are the facts for the global population as a whole. For us, with a respiratory disease it is totally different though, but there are no reliable figures available regarding us.
