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