/sci/ - Science & Math

We already know it will be worse than SARS. It may not have the same mortality rate (we don't know yet), but we definitely know it's spreading much more quickly (R0 of 3-5 wtf!!!), and unlike SARS people are infectious even before they have any symptoms. That is HUGE, compounded with the fact that China was late to start containment procedures, compounded with all the Lunar New Year travel, etc...

SARS caused 8000 cases over TWO YEARS with a mortality rate of 9.6%. nCov is now at 3000 cases in less than a month. High mortality rate actually hinders a virus' ability to spread. What's worse, 10k infections with 9.6% deaths, or 1 million infections with 4% deaths?

And that is assuming that the mortality rate is only 4%, which is impossible to know at this early stage.

Also, note that for the similar coronaviruses SARS and MERS, there was NEVER any vaccine able to be developed. I don't expect any vaccine to be able to be developed for this either.