The new virus is genetically 96% identical to a known coronavirus in bats and 86-92% identical to a coronavirus in pangolin. Therefore, the transmission of a mutated virus from animals to humans is the most likely cause of the appearance of the new virus.

When asked why Wuhan was so much higher than the national level, the Chinese official replied that it was for lack of resources, citing as an example that there were only 110 critical care beds in the three designated hospitals where most of the cases were sent.

80% of food in the UK is imported. How about your country? Your town?

The South Korean government is delivering food parcels to those in quarantine. Our national and local governments need to quickly organise the capacity and resources required to do this.Japanese schools are scheduled to be closed for march.

The limited availability of beds in Wuhan raised their mortality rate from 0.16% to 4.9%This is why the Chinese government built a hospital in a week. Are our governments capable of doing the same?

The UK population is 67 million people, that’s 5.4 million infected.Currents predictions are that 80% of the cases will be mild.If 20% of those people require hospitalization for 3–6 weeks?That’s 1,086,176 People.Do you know how many beds the NHS has?140,000

Evolving to be observant of direct dangers to ourselves seems to have left us terrible at predicting second and third-order effects of events.When worrying about earthquakes we think first of how many people will die from collapsing buildings and falling rubble. Do we think of how many will die due to destroyed hospitals?

Can you guess the number of people that have contracted the flu this year that needed hospitalisation in the US? 0.9%

The UK has 2.8 million people over the age of 85.The US has 12.6 million people over the Age of 80.Trump told people not to worry because 60,000 people a year die of the flu. If just 25% of the US over 80’s cohort get infected, given current mortality rates that’s 466,200 deaths in that age group alone with the assumption that the healthcare system has the capacity to handle all of the infected.

The formula China is using is current total deaths/current confirmed cases.

Each year the flu infects between 2 to 11% of the population. 11The infectiousness of a disease is measured by its R0 value. R0 is a measure of how many people will catch a disease from one infected person. The R0 value of the flu is 1.28. The R0 of COVID-19 is assumed to be between 1.4–3.8

cases outside of china are doubling roughly every 5 days. The reported rate of infection in China is lower, but China has taken drastic quarantine measures, including welding people inside apartment buildings.

“confirmed cases” is the lowest possible number of cases in that country. It’s the lower bound of an estimate.

In The Atlantic, Marc Lipsitch, a leading epidemiologist at Harvard reported that “that within the coming year, some 40 to 70 percent of people around the world will be infected with the virus that causes COVID-19”. This was last week and while ridiculed at the time, his assumptions are now the generally accepted position among epidemiologists.

Death Rate

The Virus may persist on surfaces for up to 9 days, on some surfaces up to 27 days