Okay so I have been seeing a lot of silly comments about the corona virus.

I am not sure if people just don't read the news or if they get misinformed or what, but let me try to get some things straight that I saw a lot of people getting wrong.

The disease IS AIRBORNE.

It does NOT mainly affect the young.

It DOES mainly affect the older population.

Now, some further information explaining the risks of the novel corona virus.

Comparing it to the flu is like comparing apples to eggs.

Influenza is serious and can be a lot more serious. Like the few times it mutated and became a novel virus like the Mexican flu and the Spanish flu.

When there is a novel strain of influenza you can start comparing them. But comparing a disease that we have vaccines and immunity against to any novel virus isn't logical.

If you do want to compare them I will tell you why the corona virus can be a lot worse. For this you need to understand what R0 is.

It basically means how many people you infect if you have the disease.

Disease A. Has an R0 of 1.

If it jumps 10 times 11 people are sick

Disease B. Has a R0 of less then 1.

The disease will likely not spread and dwindle on its own.

Disease C. Has an R0 of 2.

Because every person spread it to two people the formula goes 2x2x2.

So after jumping 10 people you would have over 500 people infected

Influenza (typically) has a R0 of around 1-2

Corona virus is estimated to have one between 2.5 and 5. When speaking of a RO of 5 nearly 10 million people would be infected after 10 cycles.

Moving on to the death rate.

At this stage we can not accurately asume any death rate.

Not everyone with the disease can be tested due to pressure on the Chinese health system. On top of that likely the worse cases are getting tested first and therefore disproportionately represented in the statistics.

On the other hand people need time to die. Comparing todays cases to todays death cases doesn't work because you don't know how many people will still die of the new cases.

The death rate could be highly over or under estimated.

We simply don't and can't know at this stage.

But I do have some interesting statistics here for you guys comparing the deaths per day to SARS and Mexican/swine flue

Some other important things to note is that this disease can spread in the incubation period. Airports checking for fevers are close to useless since people can be carrying and spreading the disease without showing any symptoms (yet).

The WHO is not only concerned with your health. It is also very interested in politics and economics. Otherwise at the very least you would asume all countries get to be involved. But Taiwan doesn't because China says so.

Now should YOU be worried? No not yet unless you live near a heavily affected area of course.

The risk of you getting it is currently likely very low.

But you should be alert and inform yourself, after all the disease has a lot of qualities that lend itself to becomeing a very dangerous pandemic.

If it will become one we don't know yet, we will have to wait and see.

My intention is not to spread fear, but to spread information.

If information makes you fearful, that isn't my fault.

*Updated/rewritten for easier reading and the removal of several dyslexia mistakes.

Ps: If there is any information in here that new information shows that it has become inaccurate or you find I missed something relevant, please do share it in the comments so I can update. I'd appreciate sources.

I found a lovely pic showing how r0works