Prediction - forecasting based on current trends. So, no worries, but if you want to base your predictions on fluffy clouds and unicorns, instead of.... well.... reality.... then do not be surprised that people may call them silly

Other causes of death usually don't spread from person to person(like heart attacks due to bad eating/etc, car accidents, etc) like this one....and as I said, if it affected a huge chunk of the population that 2% would still be a ton of people.

i.e. Other things have higher mortality rates but are more rare and don't spread as much(usually).

The problem is the chinese govt refused to let other countries know about the dangers(big or small, possible or actual) until many weeks had passed....giving the disease more time to spread, both in their own country and beyond.

As for "conspiracy level": Take my posts with a grain of salt/look into them yourself if you want(and of course one should always do so with info online), but from what i've read the recovered vs. mortality numbers seem to show the levels are much higher(though not extremely high) than the supposed 2%.

Responding to the corona virus.
As of standing the cases are largely contained within China and other nations have not dropped the ball in quarantine procedures.
This however only covers the initial step of separation & identification.
There is still no cure for ncov-1 which i believe is what it is generally being called.
It spreads via water vapor which can survive on surfaces an estimate of 9 days, longer in the right generally cool moist temperatures preferred by people to live in.
It can easily be cleansed from these surfaces, but must be done so & disposed of in light of it's highly contagious nature.
Two victims spread roughly to five others and as such as a contagion event it is exponential.
Currently it has over 60,000 confirmed cases and a mortality around 30%; as such with with the time it will likely take not only to effectively create a treatment, but to with by that time the increasing need to manufacture sufficient supply you are looking at least at 20,000 dead.
The current amount of confirmed cases is about 0.004% of china's population so even if china isn't containing these current people it would take 5 cycles ([2.5^5]x0.004) to reach close to half a percent of china's population; so the explosion of it as an epidemic is quite premature.
The largest problem of course is it's diverse spread (globally) where it can find area's less capable of it's containment and worse present resistance to efforts of treatment.
For example Africa might become problematic; countries in upheavals will become problematic.
If this becomes the case there is a real danger in it becoming uncontained and being a virus changing to a more benign strain which would actually be worse because people would take it less seriously.
Just because it may become less harmful doesn't mean it won't stay less harmful or there won't be cases where there is exception; it would likely become as prevalent in such a case as the 'flu'.
The big center to watch is India and the reason being is that it's expected to be big in China, it's spread far within their borders and external separation so far from china seems to be doing it's job; but if it gets through to enough of the Indian population the realistic trade impact globally of both China and India will start causing possibly enough strain that most of the world will be forced to instead of not doing trade with those countries, switching to 'taking precautions'.
In Australia we have already had a case of Hepatitus-B being shipped in frozen fruit from China; it is natural to assume that there will be mistakes or worse 'shortcuts taken'.
China & England are both fairly big on the surveillance state which helps track down spread; but many countries simply don't have that infrastructure, or want/permit such infrastructure.
So if in 6 months time we firstly don't have an easily deployed solution and secondly if India is growing similarly to how China is now; it would be a safe thing to say that ncov-1 will have attained effective global spread and thus be a full epidemic.
Reports that it will effect 60% of the worlds population though I personally roll my eyes at, not just for the fact of how massively mishandled the spread would have to be, but the fact that you don't need it to reach 60% of the population to radically change countries in a myriad of damaging ways including spurring on an Orwellian surveillance state or triggering a depression that might prove even worse in some countries from a casualty perspective than the virus.

Nice post, and well written, so I will reply a bit:

The problem is that(afaik, and from what i've heard) China didn't announce it for a week or so, leading to it possibly being spread beyond it's borders. That plus our more open/global world stage nowadays leads me to "worry" a bit(but only a bit).

And that's assuming the 60k number is accurate and not being downplayed by the Chinese to avoid a panic.

And even if they aren't doing that, that's only the confirmed cases...there could be and likely are more that are either asymptomatic and/or unconfirmed as of yet.

Still, even 20k dead is still a high number and I feel sorry for all those losing or that might lose loved ones and friends. :\

Possibly, but afaik the number of cases is doubling every several days.....that alone is somewhat troubling.

Plus if it spreads far and wide enough trade will slow down even more and needed supplies(medical and otherwise) will start to run even lower than now.

And since many get certain goods/services from those countries it could affect many multi national chains that depends on those things to some degree.

This is why I worry about it a bit more than average flus/etc.

(BTW what is the difference between pandemic and epidemic again? Just trying to jog my memory)

Maybe not 60%, but if the claims that it persists even in "cured" people(i.e. they spread it even when recovered) are true & it reaches enough international airports then I could see it reaching over 25% or so of global population....and with around 35% mortality those numbers are nothing to(pardon the phrasing) to sneeze at.

An epidemic is when it runs rampant & spreads to areas of the globe outside of forecast; a pandemic is when at that stage it is considered so rampant essentially the genie is not so much out of the bottle as off the chain completely.
In conceptual terms of nCov-1 a pandemic would be reflected in all countries being effected in multiple mainland area's breaching national quarantine capability without enough capability to vaccinate to reduce spread to a linear state (from current exponential 2.5people/carrier).

I agree a 30% mortality is nothing to sneeze at; but that is 30% before a)vaccine development and b) any credible avenue to cure.
We might find a partial vaccine before an effective cure that lowers that mortality figure significantly; and speaking from a 'microbiology base' diseases have specific cycles that if interrupted at any vital stage can stop it's effectiveness.
So usually you throw every drug at a pure sample you can and if the sample turns around dead, you split those drugs up and see which one, or combination did it.
Then you trial it on an 'impure sample' eg. current form in a representative animal (I doubt they are allowing straight to human testing even if one third of people are killed by ncov-1) and see if it is still effective and to how large a dose per mass is needed to achieve complete breakdown of the disease.
A Virus is nastier than a Bacterial disease though due to size and might effect the cell nucleus and you don't want to 'shotgun cure' it like cancer drugs that hit everything that divides.
So in the nut shell they are going to have to work harder for proper eradication, but it should be a rather short turn around to get something workable to improve on that 30%.
Of course it's suppose to of been known in China for over a month or so... so if not by the end of next month then we'll know that the basic measure of broad scale testing simply doesn't work and 30% is after simple methods are already applied which is a scary thought.

Thanks for clearing that up and providing an example.

Well than I hope for everyone's sake they get a cure/etc found/made asap so we can stem the amount of potential deaths from this(along with other measures like quarantine/etc).

Also interesting info.

As for human testing: Most other countries might not go that far or that quickly, but China might...... imo they might(if numbers get high enough) trial it on more willing patients(plus this is more likely given their various bio programs like the "hiv resistant" babies/etc).

Even so, and they get it to like 5%(optimistic estimate) and quickly that would still kill a good number of people if it spread far enough(And, as I said, if the rumors of people staying walking viral spreaders even when recovered are true).

That is scary enough, even without all the other rumors floating around.