The 2% mortality rate figure is not accurate.
It is derived by dividing the number of deaths by the number of confirmed cases. But there are far more people who have the virus than the number of confirmed cases. There are lots of people with mild symptoms or even no symptoms who never show up at a hospital and nobody finds out they had the virus.
The problem is that right now, nobody knows exactly how many people actually have or have had the virus, and we don't know enough about it to estimate yet. The true mortality rate is going to be less than 2%, but we don't know how much less.
For a point of comparison, Germany has done extensive testing to try to actually catch all the infections, and currently has over 1900 confirmed cases and only 3 deaths.
It is derived by dividing the number of deaths by the number of confirmed cases. But there are far more people who have the virus than the number of confirmed cases. There are lots of people with mild symptoms or even no symptoms who never show up at a hospital and nobody finds out they had the virus.
The problem is that right now, nobody knows exactly how many people actually have or have had the virus, and we don't know enough about it to estimate yet. The true mortality rate is going to be less than 2%, but we don't know how much less.
For a point of comparison, Germany has done extensive testing to try to actually catch all the infections, and currently has over 1900 confirmed cases and only 3 deaths.