The case fatality is <1%, Italy just has a lot of people infected with SARS-CoV-2. There must be over a million cases in Italy, they just aren’t able to test everyone. The age distribution is similar in South Korea.<p>As bad as Italy is, India worries me the most by far.
I'd like to note that so far we only know the mortality rate under the assumption that every patient that needs to be hospitalized (~18% of infected looking at NY's numbers) receives treatment. That is why the elderly and people with underlying health conditions are dying – they can't survive being in an ICU with a nasty disease a lot of the time.<p>Once we run out of beds and ventilators, the picture will look very different. I don't know about you, but I'm not old but I'd much rather be in a hospital if I have a nasty case of pneumonia, but we certainly can't fit 40-80% of the population in hospitals, let alone have enough health workers to treat them.
Can we trust Italy's numbers? They're attributing any questionable death to corona to hide their embarrassing influenza death rate. This can almost explain USA's minuscule death toll at 500 (influenza season averages 200/day).