How bad Coronavirus is? We associate the most recent outbreak with other major viruses

In the current epidemic, 1,018 people – all in China except two – died and there are some 43,106 confirmed infections.

A 39-year-old man in Hong Kong has been the first confirmed death of coronavirus in the world and a 44-year-old man in the Philippines has died.

In two dozen other countries, approximately 470 cases have been reported.

Despite criticism from China and the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, and Australia placed similar restrictions.

Similar to many other illnesses are the symptoms of cough and fever, as well as pneumonia in severe cases.

This week the World Health Organization director-general said that the organization is still unable to anticipate where the outbreak is headed, but that it acknowledges that there is still an opportunity to prevent it.

SARS

You may have found that coronavirus was very much associated with SARS and, for good reason, that in reality SARS was a coronavirus.  

Confused? Confused? Don't be. Don't be. In fact, coronavirus is a family of viruses with common cold.

This current coronavirus outbreak was temporarily referred to as "2019-nCoV," but that doesn't roll out the tongue as easily.

A global outbreak between November 2002 and July 2003 was caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The new coronavirus was very close. Importantly, it was less infectious, but also fatal.

However, the death toll of coronavirus has now exceeded SARS, which killed just 774 people.

Nonetheless, it is difficult for the Chinese authorities to compare the number of deaths after the same period during the SRAS epidemic – a lesson they seem to have learnt this time around.

Since 2004, no new cases of SARS have been confirmed.

Ebola

Although SARS symptoms and coronavirus can be linked with influenza, ebola symptoms certainly can not.

The infection seriously affects the ability of the blood to coagulate and contributes to fatal, uncontrolled bleeding.

As you can see from the map above, it is far more lethal than coronavirus, and almost 50 percent of the cases were fatal during the West Africa epidemic from 2014-16.

Only a concerted global effort led by the WHO stopped the virus spread across Africa, although isolated cases like Scottish nurse Pauline Cafferkey slipped through the net.

Spanish Influenza

It is important to go back to 1918 and bring all of these into perspective.

Not only was mankind faced with the most deadly war in history by far, but an influenza epidemic spread around the world killing around 5% of the world's total population – around 50 m.

In isolated islands in the Pacific and Arctic, there was hardly a corner of the world unnoticed.  

What was especially disturbing about this strain of the influenza was that it was extremely deadly for those who were 20-40 years old in normal healthy times.

Healthcare was obviously more vulnerable a hundred years ago and the WHO did not manage a solution, but scientists really don't know why it was so catastrophic.

Statista chart provided.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the total Spanish influenza deaths were nearly 500 million.