Soothing comments

The Interpreter is a newsletter that the NY Times sends to its subscribers. Here are some comments from today's issue about the coronavirus issue:

The disease is probably not particularly deadly; health officials tend to put it somewhere within range from of a severe seasonal flu. The World Health Organization said that the coronavirus is thought to be a bit deadlier than the flu, but to spread less easily. Even in a global pandemic, it’s expected to kill fewer people than the flu virus. The flu goes globally pandemic every year and the world continues spinning.

The risk from the virus’s impact on you individually is probably low. As for the systemic risk, it depends, as with virtually all kinds of systemic risk, on your personal context. If you live someplace with good governance, as well as plentiful health care and economic resources, the systemic risk to you is likely to be lower. That means that you have less chance of dying from Covid-19, yes, but it also means that any impact on you is likely to be less severe. The state will be better able to absorb any societal and economic burden.