... when we don't really understand just how this virus behaves and what can be done to counter it.
We do understand how this behaves. In terms of disease transmission this is just like any cold or the flu. It is spread by viruses in expressed mucus. It is only infectious if you breathe in droplets of infected bodily fluids or transfer then to your own mucous membranes (eyes, nose, mouth) by hand contact with a contaminated surface and thence on to eyes, nose, mouth etc. (There are no recorded instances, that I know of, of transmission via other bodily orifices but that is not
impossible.)
There are not any unknown mechanisms of transmission. If you keep far enough away from other people that you don't get hit by the spray from coughs, sneezes or even normal saliva spray from talking, or drifting droplets from such spray, and you follow meticulous hand hygiene
you will not get infected.
The 2m separation distance being touted in the UK is pretty arbitrary, actual 'not a chance if getting infected' distance is going to be very situation specific - indoors, outdoors, still air, windy and so on. If you're 10m away from an infectious person who sneezes without a tissue or mask in still air or upwind of them then you have a snowball's chance in hell of getting infected, even 5m is highly unlikely.
It is not like the common cold or normal flu, it is an invisible, silent killer that can strike anyone.
It is just like both in basic essence. The only difference is one of degree in the virulence and pathogenicity. Flu kills people every year, even common colds kill the very vulnerable. In terms of how it is transmitted, how it works in the body etc. it is just the same as colds and flu - the 'common' cold is frequently attributable to coronaviruses (among others such as rhinoviruses), just different ones to the one that we're battling at the moment.
It was initially thought that it would be most deadly to the elderly and infirm, that has subsequently been shown to be incorrect as there are now many people that fall outside that demographic that have tragically lost their lives. It was also thought that only about 1% of those that caught it would die from it, figures from the UK disprove that theory as can be seen from site https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/ it is in fact around 10%.
There has been no change in the profile of morbidity or mortality. It is still the case, and was always thought to be, that the majority of deaths would be in the elderly. Don't be fooled by isolated cases - i.e. just because you have heard of a few healthy young people dying doesn't mean they are dropping like flies - it's a common human failing to jump on isolated evidence and draw a distorted picture, we all do it, all the time.
The figures being used for modelling in the UK, based on the best available data at 16th march are:
Age-group (years) | % symptomatic cases requiring hospitalisation | % hospitalised cases requiring critical care | Infection Fatality Ratio |
0 to 9 | 0.1% | 5.0% | 0.002% |
10 to 19 | 0.3% | 5.0% | 0.006% |
20 to 29 | 1.2% | 5.0% | 0.03% |
30 to 39 | 3.2% | 5.0% | 0.08% |
40 to 49 | 4.9% | 6.3% | 0.15% |
50 to 59 | 10.2% | 12.2% | 0.60% |
60 to 69 | 16.6% | 27.4% | 2.2% |
70 to 79 | 24.3% | 43.2% | 5.1% |
80+ | 27.3% | 70.9% | 9.3% |
i.e. Someone who is 80+ who gets infected is 310 times more likely to die than someone 20-29 years old who gets infected. It's pretty obvious that the "% hospitalised cases requiring critical care" figures for the lowest ages groups are estimates with large safety margins (probably because the number of serious cases in those age groups have been too low to produce statistically valid estimates).
As far as the 10% death rate is concerned that is just not correct. I don't know quite what worldometer have done to mess up those numbers, or what qualifications they are missing but every scientific paper that I've looked at shows death rates in line with expectations - which is 1-3% depending on the population and the healthcare resources available to them. The case fatality ratio for the West seems to be at around 1.3% on an age-adjusted population basis. I suspect that there's some serious problems with their data labelling and sampling. e.g.
current confirmed cases (excluding unreported like BD139) versus
cumulative deaths.