BTW The per capita risk of dying from corona in China is 2 x 10^-6... in South Korea 5 x 10^-7. The per capita risk of dying from the seasonal flu in the US is between 1 x 10^-4 and 5 x 10^-5. In other words, the risk from dying from the flu because it is much more prevalent in the US is orders of magnitude higher than dying from corona in either China or South Korea, the two countries the CDC has published warnings about.
Being a statistician, this is what is so interesting as the numbers play out. CFR in Iran (if you believe their numbers) is around 5%, in China and Italy, it seems closer to 2-3%, however, in South Korea, the numbers are close to 0.5%. Why the difference?
This is just my thoughts. Either (1), South Korea is doing a much better job of testing everyone and thus has a better handle on what the true incidence rate is in the population, or (2), where the outbreak occurs (in Italy, the hospital in Codogno - and, I fear, in Washington State, the Nursing Home) can affect deaths. In South Korea, the outbreak was in a large church, but you wouldn't have too many compromised people there. In Italy, when the PM said "Protocols in the Hospital weren't followed", I wonder if care givers in the hospital went from the original case into places like the ICU, etc, which would be really bad...
Again, no basis for this, but I think that there are a lot of factors at play in terms of what the CFR is until we see this play out. For H1N1, the original CFR estimates turned out to be way higher than what they really were. I think that it's almost like a "fog of war" that since we are in the middle of it, we don't have a true sense of what's going on. For all we know, it may have been circulating even here for awhile and a lot of people could have had it, but if it were mild, it may never have been picked up. I just don't think we have a handle on the true population that has been exposed...
