Will You Die From the Coronavirus?

I'm sure you already know about the Wuhan Coronavirus. It originated at a wet market in Wuhan, China and has only existed since late last year. It spread extremely rapidly within Wuhan and the rest of China and has an ever-rising death and infection count. The virus has drawn huge amounts of global attention and is causing fear of an impending apocalypse across the world. Fortunately, you will most likely not be killed by the Coronavirus.

In fact, odds are that you won’t contract it. So far, the only country where the virus is spreading from person to person on a large scale is mainland China. A few other countries in Asia have also had transmissions of the virus, but nowhere near the numbers we are seeing in China. Outside of Asia, pretty much every case is a person who recently was in Wuhan or at least mainland China. There are a small number of cases of person to person transmission between those returning from China and close relatives. The CDC remains confident that the United States can contain these isolated cases. 

Let’s say that containment procedures break down across the globe and we have a legitimate pandemic. Although hundreds of millions could become infected, the majority will likely  survive the virus. That is, as long as you aren’t elderly, very young, living with a pre-existing condition, or are otherwise immunocompromised in some other way, you’re likely to survive. Getting accurate data out of China has been a struggle, but as of now, the virus has about a 2% mortality rate. For comparison, SARS killed 10% of those who contracted it and the Flu kills about .05%. As far as we know, almost all of these deaths are in cases in which the patient is over the age of 55 or has a pre-existing condition. In general, only 20% of cases even develop into a severe case in which a patient develops life-threatening pneumonia.

Although the Coronavirus probably doesn't pose a significant threat to the average person, it could still kill a lot of immunocompromised people worldwide. For this reason, it is crucial that the Chinese government, the Center for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization continue to treat the virus with extreme caution. A few proprietary treatments have been discovered, and strides have been made on a vaccine, so hopefully this epidemic will soon fade into the past like SARS.