With polarized debates raging about whether the novel coronavirus pandemic is serious enough to shut down economies around the world, death counts in the US, and especially in New York, continue to rise, and nobody knows how high they will go.
What makes it difficult for us to wrap our heads around this particular disease is that it is unpredictable.
That's because it's contagious, the vast majority of people remain susceptible to it, large percentages of infected people never know they are contagious, and we're still far from a vaccine.
In this video we explain some of the mortality statistics that researchers are using to characterize this disease.
New data show that the coronavirus death count is higher than we thought but the death rate is lower.
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