We all know that already.
Let's just wipe out the entire populations of India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and China for a start. Those coumtries all have far too high a population density. Then let's redistribute the slum dwellers of Såo Paulo to the underpopulated Scottish highlands. That should do the trick!

What a strange comment!

..... or get people to realise this pandemic is not to be taken lightly.

This all sucks, but better to be over prepared than find out too late one is under prepared. The only real danger of too much excitement here in the USA is that there are lots of militant extremists here looking for any reason to start killing people.

@Observer-Effect That is a very real threat. If people are desperate and starving, yet see an elite who are affluent and well fed, then they will contemplate revolution.
History is littered with examples.

Using the latest figures, as at 02.00hrs, GMT (9pm, EST) there are 857,299 known cases world wide.
There are 42,114 deaths world wide.
So the world wide death rate is at least 4.9%.
Remember something, though.
In both Italy and Spain isolation is mandatory. There are police patrols. Anyone caught outside their home without a valid (and provable) reason faces a massive fine. Yet infections are still ongoing.

To a great extent. That is why I used the word known

@Petter add that only about 7% of tests meeting those criteeia are positivr, and the death rate is a crap shot. Outside of tge US maybe the stats mean something

i was using this method during the early stages of the Covid-19 outbreaks in both Italy and Spain. Initially, it seemed to give an exaggeratedly high figure. Now, even when using present numbers for both, it appears to have been an underestimate.
However, by taking the total number of known cases as at 8 days prior to the actual date, my system tallied very well.
eg.
Italy has now reported 105,892 cases, of whom 12,428 have died. That gives a death rate of 11.7%
Spain has now reported 95,923 cases, of whom 8,464 have died. That gives a death rate of 8.8%

@Petter So the predictors were using substantially incorrect models. That does not surprise me in the slightest.

@anglophone They were downplaying in order not to alarm the public. I suspect the US death rate is also higher, with the caveat that these numbers obviously only apply to known infections.
Many people may get it so mildly, or even be asymptomatic, that they do not ever get tested.
However, even assuming that the number of infected people is twice the number of those actually tested, we still get some nasty death rates, far higher than the government would have you believe.

@Petter And that, my friend, is why I always treat government figures with suspicion unless and until I can get independent verification of the same.

@anglophone Join the club. Here's one of the many sources I use.
[worldometers.info]

You might wish to read my comment above.

If 1O people eat some kind of fruit, and 2 of them eat apples, then two out of ten people eat apples.
That would be the incidence (or rate) of apple eaters. This can be somplified to saying one in five people eat apples.
Hence, if 100,000 people have an infection, and 3,000 of them die, we can simplify that to saying 3 out of every hundred will die. 3 out of every hundred is 3% (per cent = per hundred)

@anglophone Bear in mind I've always been abysmal at math but wait til it's over then count the bodies then divide than from the number of people infected. That's how I see it.

@Sgt_Spanky That is a fairly good approximation. Moreover, its gets more accurate over time. It's only purists like me that get hung up on the way some people, mostly politicians, misuse statistics.