Geopolitical Futures with possible good news on the coronavirus

In the U.S., the virus has now been detected from the West Coast to the East Coast, and as of publication, six people have died in the United States, all in Washington state. There is, however, a possible silver lining. Based on a genetic analysis, scientists believe that the coronavirus has been circulating in the Seattle area for about six weeks. If that’s really the case, then it is almost certainly true that hundreds if not thousands of people in Greater Seattle alone already have been exposed to and infected by the virus. That only six people have died is further evidence, then, that the case fatality rate is far below the widely cited 2 percent estimate, which has likely been inflated because of the concentration of deaths in Hubei province. Some 4.2 percent of patients have died in the province, where hospitals are overwhelmed, compared to just around 0.8 percent elsewhere in mainland China. In South Korea, the rate is just above 0.53 percent, while in Italy it’s about 2.5 percent. Iran’s case fatality rate has started to normalize now that Tehran is acknowledging the scale of its outbreak (835 new confirmed cases on Tuesday alone). A lower case fatality rate would suggest the virus is more akin to a severe cold or seasonal flu than the more dire comparisons that have been made.