to urban areas as part of a contentious labor program. The Times obtained rare footage taken inside one." Which of course is just as important.

People screaming, begging for help. Awful.

It basically said that it wasn't that serious. Right.

Every pathogen can have something called a basic reproduction number defined for it, which is defined as the number of people in a completely vulnerable population (IE, no vaccinations or other precautions taken) one person will infect on average over the course of an epidemic.

Depending on the source, the Wuhan Corona Virus is estimated to have a basic reproduction number somewhere between 1.4 and 4 depending on the source. The H1N1 influenza in 2009 was in the range of 1.4-1.6. The Spanish Flu of 1918 was estimated at 2-3. SARS was somewhere between 2 and 5. Mumps varies from 4 to 7.

So this virus is more infectious than the flu but not as much as SARS nor Mumps. Influenza kills less than 0.1% of the people it infects, SARS killed about 10%. The Wuhan Corona Virus so far has killed about 3% of those infected.