>First of all, the cumulative death toll from all the feared infectious pandemics of the past-quarter century—mad cow disease (1996), SARS (2002), bird flu (2004), swine flu (2009), Ebola (2014), Zika (2016) and the ongoing coronavirus, or COVID-19 (2020)—doesn’t add up to the death toll of a single season of influenza.
This is irresponsible journalism. Not all pandemics are created equal. We know the R0 of this virus is at least as high (3-6+) as any of those listed, and the true mortality rate is still unknown, but likely to be high given the >15% critical illness rate, requiring ICU care.
Just look at the unbelievable response by China. To dismiss this as "just another pandemic" is not only foolish but at this point dangerous. China and Iran have been brought to their knees. Government officials are getting sick. Young people are dying. The primary figures we have so far are at least 10x underreported because they come from China.
The disruption to the global economy is just starting and there's a good chance it will last for many months as the pandemic spreads, and with multiple reports of reinfection this pandemic may be impossible to control without a vaccine or drugs or a fortunate series of mutations, though even from the perspective of mutations the virus is already showing to be unusually prone and dangerous.
Literally everything published about this virus is bad news. This is an unprecedented geopolitical event and anyone seriously buying the numbers from China or following the advice of the corrupt and/or incompetent WHO is putting everyone else at risk. But we will know for sure in 1-3 weeks as cases run their courses in Korea and Italy and true R0, critical illness, and CFR rates are reported.
Edit: this article doesn't even question the veracity of the Chinese figures while it bends backwards to explain why the figures we have are overrepresenting severity. While this may be true, again, look at the unheard of response in China, which still has the majority of it's GDP shut down, 2 months later.
Classifying the most educated people on the subject as "attention seekers" is so dangerous. I can't believe we're still at this stage.