According to the New York Times, the death rate of the coronavirus everywhere throughout China outside of Hubei Province, where the disease originated, is just 0.4% — and “the true fatality rate could be even lower” because the majority of infected people probably don’t even know they have it since they don’t “show any symptoms at all.”

Conversely, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently told USA Today that coronavirus is just a “blip on the horizon” and a “trivial risk” compared to the flu. The Centers for Disease Control confirmed that the flu killed “an estimated 80,000 Americans” just two winters ago — not to mention the 646,000 people who die every year from it worldwide — without nary a headline at all. What’s more, everyone who gets the flu each season feels like they have the flu, whereas “more than 80% of coronavirus infections are pretty mild,” and “no more severe than the common cold,” according to NPR. One article in The New York Times recently said that for the majority of coronavirus victims, the symptoms go “unrecognized” and “could be just as small as a sore throat” and in “one or two days, it’s gone.”

Another important distinction about coronavirus is that it affects each age group very differently. According to NPR, the number of children who have become infected with coronavirus is “remarkably low,” with many infected children “developing no symptoms at all.” And BBC reported that of the 3,000-plus coronavirus deaths so far, only eight of them have occurred in people under 30 — none at all in children age 10 and under. In fact, more than 80% of all coronavirus deaths have occurred in persons 60 years and older, frequently as a result of preexisting heart conditions.