I encourage everyone to check out the link Pence gave today. Coronavirus.gov
There is good information there. Particularly these two bits
The first part is very clear. "It's likely at some point, widespread transmission will occur". It was stated many times by the taskforce that the virus spreads similarly to the flu.
Next is Illness severity. 16% of cases being serious is not insignficant. Generally, serious illness means hospitalization is necessary. Or at a minimum, some type of care is required.
In a typical flu season, 32 Million Americans are infected and the mortality rate is 0.1%
If we assume the illness over the year will infect as many people as the Flu, we can model this number of deaths with the information available to us.
Right now, overall mortality is about 3.5%.
However, a lack of testing and test availability can skew that number. Consider this.
South Korea has done the most testing. They have tested well over 150,000 and found over 7,500 cases.
So they are starting to reach statistical significance most likely to help us find a more accurate mortality rate.
Their mortality rate if you do that math above is 0.7%
Seven times more deadly than the flu....
But there is a problem. That's the absolute LOWEST the mortality rate can be. Only 247 people have recovered from the illness in that data. You won't have an accurate mortality rate until all patients have recovered. The mortality rate vs recovered rate is a staggering 22%. But that's highly unlikely to bare out. No need to panic about that specifically, but do expect mortality to be higher than 0.7%
So let's be optimistic and say the mortality rate is 0.5%. If 32 million Americans get it (like the Flu), that means around 160K will die this year in the US.
But at a mortality rate of 3.5%, over 1 million Americans will die. That means it's statically likely at least 1 person you know will die from the illness this year (assuming you know at least 300 people)
Now I say all this to say.... we can avoid this with personal responsibility. Even if mortality rate is high on this illness, practing personal responsibility can save lives. You can literally be a hero by simply, shopping online one weekend instead of going to the store.
Just be responsible, think objectively and take care of yourself. If you get ill, stay inside.