"Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China to learn about the virus and China’s response, said the specialists did not see evidence that a large number of mild cases of the novel disease called Covid-19 are evading detection."
Given this information, the current 'death rate' by taking the inappropriate total deaths/total infected = ~2,800/~80,000 = 3.5% and is rising with 'newly infected' numbers out of China dropping, but deaths still high.
The real problem is the percentage of people that need hospitalization, especially critical care.
So far the 80,000 mostly from Wuhan, is less than 1% of Wuhan's total population, yet hospitals are completely overrun. We should expect a lower death rate from countries with low numbers to deal with, but higher death rates once numbers swamp hospitals.
Given the spread on the cruise ship, in South Korea, Iran and Italy, especially the speed of spread, then without fairly draconian measures, this thing will spread like wildfire.
It is not currently as deadly as just the flu, but is quickly heading to be much, much worse. Hence the danger of this.
A modern economy relies upon lots of interactions between people, but this virus has put a big spanner in the works. Those that don't see the danger, I think they are trying to convince themselves that this is not very, very bad.
