The lesson is diseases happen, and then they go away and we forget all about them. Bird flu, swine flu, SARS, MERS and soon nCoV-19. The number of active cases is approaching half of what it was at peak, and the mortality rate is now close to 0.7% - and largely weak/immunocompromised patients, the same order of magnitude as the normal flu. Further, a few groups claim a vaccine is only a few months away, and it responds to some existing antiviral medications.
> a few groups claim a vaccine is only a few months away
That's just wrong as it would take months and months to test before you could deploy it. At least one of the vaccines for SARs actually made things worse, if memory serves. Not to mention the manufacturing ramp up time.
The map is not the territory. For example, in the US, it is entirely unclear how many cases there are as only 400 tests have been done in total.
It also has a 0.7% case fatality rate in China (and 0.6% outside) on par with H1N1 at 0.45%. Nothing really needs to be done -- this time. The situation would be far, far worse with a disease that actually killed a lot of healthy individuals.
Worldwide, there were 2,979 deaths and 42,576 recovered. That math suggests you might have an extra decimal point there. There are many ways to do the math, but 0.7% is not really a sensible number to work from. General consensus hovers at 2-3%.
Aside from that, a much larger (as of yet unknown) number have permanent lung scarring. That's not a joke. Read about SARS and MERS long-term prognosis from similar scarring.
That's unfortunately a common misunderstanding of how CFR or case fatality rate works. It begins huge as only the most serious cases are identified as nCoV and it falls as the long tail comes into view.
Over the last few days, we've seen thousands of recoveries and tens of deaths. Marginally, it's 0.6% globally from the latest WHO data. The media is sensationalizing this and playing on peoples fears and emotions.
> Aside from that, a much larger (as of yet unknown) number have permanent lung scarring. That's not a joke. Read about SARS and MERS long-term prognosis from similar scarring.
To your own point, we have no idea if it's even a thing. Just because SARS, MERS and nCoV are all coronaviruses doesn't mean they act the same way. MERS has a 35% fatality rate vs. and I can't stress this enough 0.6%, so two whole orders of magnitude less fatal.
