Most estimates place the R0 of SARS-2 as roughly the same as that of SARS-1, about 3.0. This is actually rather worrisomely high for a pathogen; compare it to the R0 of ordinary influenza, which is 0.9 to 2.1.55 But SARS-2 has a smaller dispersion in Re, meaning that transmission chains are somewhat less likely to be dead ends, which makes it easier to reliably spread SARS-2 than SARS-1. SARS-2 is also less deadly than SARS-1, with a CFR of less than 1 percent (compared to around 10 percent for SARS-2). As we saw, this makes SARS-2 paradoxically more concerning, because larger numbers of
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