Get your affairs in order: If Harvard professor is correct about global coronavirus pandemic, expect 68-136 million deaths worldwide in 2020, dwarfing deaths from ordinary influenza

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told The Wall Street Journal that "it's likely we'll see a global pandemic" of coronavirus, with 40 to 70 percent of the world's population likely to be infected this year.

"What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I can't give a good number," added Lipsitch, who is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

Others have recently estimated that the virus could hit 60 to 80 percent of the world's population.

More.

Current deaths from coronavirus officially are 1,523 out of 66,492 cases, a death rate of 2.29%.

Global population currently stands at 7.44 billion.

A 40% pandemic would infect 2.976 billion people, with 68.15 million deaths at a 2.29% death rate.

An 80% pandemic would infect 5.952 billion people, with 136.3 million deaths at a 2.29% death rate.

Ordinary influenza kills at most not quite 650,000 people globally every year.

100 years ago this year the Spanish flu infected 500 million people, 27% of the world, killing at least 17 million, a minimum death rate of 3.4%.