How dangerous is the coronavirus 2020

The coronavirus is extremely dangerous, and I suspect that the danger is currently being underplayed by the world medical community to minimize panic as we prepare for the worst.
Covid-19 is deadly, although fatality rates skyrocket for the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.

First and foremost, it is really important to know that as of today (February 17, 2020), there is still much we do not know about SARS-CoV-2 (i.e. the official name of the novel coronavirus) and COVID-19 (i.e. the official name of the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2). This uncertainty makes this question difficult to answer with a short or simple response.

However, epidemiologists and scientists from around the world are making rapid and significant real-time progress in understanding the nature of this novel coronavirus. Earlier today, a comprehensive report from the China CDC was released on over 70,000 individual cases in China, which included data for 99% of confirmed cases globally as of February 11th, 2020.

As I stated at the very beginning, there are still many unknowns out there. That is why there is no simple answer to the question of how dangerous this thing really is. Among others:

• There is no vaccine against COVID-19 (one that can be deployed safely at scale)
• We are still unsure about how contagious this is in people that are infected but asymptomatic
• We do not know how many people are infected, because (very likely) many people are infected and not yet identified for a variety of reasons
• We do not know exactly why infection and/or mortality rates for young people are so much lower
• We do not know how countries with less-developed healthcare systems will be able to cope with potential outbreaks
• SARS-CoV-2 will continue to mutate and evolve (although scientists aren’t that worried about this)
• It’s hard to predict the second-order effects (e.g. policy under/over-reaction, economic disruption, etc.)