Just to put things in perspective: I just read an interesting article in The NY Times about the desperate lack of supplies and hospital beds in Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak. I wonder if the fact that this virus appears so deadly could partially be influenced by our getting said percentage from simply dividing the number of fatalities (most of which were living in the dramatically medically underserved Wuhan) divided by the number of those infected (likewise mostly living in Wuhan). Epidemiologically viewed, this is of course the proper way to do it, but if we look at the context, we may find that those numbers and our subsequent assessment for our risk of dying from this may be quite misleading. If the sample from which we obtain our assessment of how deadly this virus is comes from an area with little medical resources, there is a good chance that the numbers we look at are heavily skewed. Look, for another example, at the number of people dying from measles in some African communities vs those dying from it who live in industrialized countries and who choose to not vaccinate but have access to proper medical care if infected. Even though some of them will experience deadly or disabling complications, the number of those who do is relatively low.
All of that said, I hope we can contain this virus and won’t have to find out what a comparable percentage in areas in which those who are infected receive prompt, comprehensive medical care would look like. My thoughts go out to those infected, wherever they may be, and their families.
I’m not trying to downplay the danger of pandemics at a time of frequent travels, ongoing (and in some parts of the world increasing) science-illiteracy, overuse of antibiotics (in this case less relevant, since this is a virus, not a bacterium, but certainly a factor in the danger of potential future pandemics resulting from multiple-medication-resistent bacteria), and poverty in times of tendencies towards cutthroat, corporate, for-profit medical and pharmaceutical industries’ leaving more and more people without adequate care (and thus jeopardizing all of us). The next deadly virus or bacterial threat is probably just around the corner, but in this case it seems that the frantic hysteria found in some media outlets may be just a tad premature. I hope the following link to the above mentioned NY Times article (“Coronavirus Pummels Wuhan, a City short of Supplies and Overwhelmed” by Amy Qin, who is currently in Wuhan) works:
Amy Qin’s article
