WORLDVIEW: The truth about how coronavirus will reshape the world

The novel coronavirus is causing a panic that may – or may not – be out of proportion to its potential for devastation. There are too many unknowns for us to properly assess its likely impact. But however deadly it turns out to be, the odds are good that the coronavirus is going to permanently reshape our world.

Health risks unclear

At this point, we don't know enough about the coronavirus to guess how deadly it's going to be. For a start, we don't really know how lethal it is. Our best data estimates a mortality rate of around 2% – about 20 times more deadly than the regular flu. But that may not be a good guess, because it's based on how many people with confirmed coronavirus have died. It's possible that a) there are many more infected people that we don't know about who didn't get terribly sick and the mortality rate is much lower or b) there are many infected people who died without being confirmed cases and the mortality rate is much higher or c) the virus will mutate as it spreads and become deadlier.

We also don't actually know how widely the virus has spread. In the US, UK, and Italy there are confirmed cases that cannot be traced to contact with someone who travelled to an infected area. This means that the virus is spreading quietly in communities, probably through the mechanism of people who don't get terribly ill but are ill enough to be contagious.

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