There are 70,548 confirmed cases, and 1,770 deaths, according to Chinese authorities.
A 40% global pandemic and at this death rate would kill 74 million people worldwide, and about 8 million in the United States.
The Diamond Princess cruise ship, quarantined in Japan and with all passengers confined to cabin, has an infection rate of 9.6%, with 356 total cases of coronavirus out of approximately 3,700 passengers and crew and no deaths reported to date.
If the US observed similarly strict quarantine measures during a pandemic and achieved a similar infection rate of only 9.6%, there would eventually be roughly 32 million domestic cases of which about 800,000 would die at a 2.5% death rate, far surpassing total world deaths from influenza in a bad year.
The US has fewer than 1 million hospital beds available, dropping from 1.5 million in 1975 to about 931,000 as of 2017.
A pandemic in the US would present some of the same survivability issues faced by victims in China, where the sick are turned away simply for lack of space.
