alt Hacker NewsLower fatality rate (and longer gestation times) are things that make a disease spread farther (not necessarily faster -but we take care of that, with international travel).
The OG Ebola had almost 100% fatality rate, and a short gestation time (I think only a few days). It didn't spread too far. The one that killed a few thousand people, though, had about a 50% fatality rate, and I think its gestation period was a bit over a week (these are the products of a faulty memory, but quoting LLM output isn't considered polite, hereabouts, and, for all we know, they could hallucinate the stats, anyway). Also, a hemorrhagic fever pretty much chews up your organs, so it's likely to drive bad health outcomes, for the rest of our lives, even if we survive.
HIV/AIDS has (the meds just keep it at bay) a 100% fatality rate, but a very long gestation period.
COVID, I believe, had about a 1% rate, in the OG variant, and that brought the world to a standstill. I think Spanish Flu (another world standstill), had about 2.5%, and a relatively short gestation period, but it was also quite communicable.
> COVID, I believe, had about a 1% rate, in the OG variant, and that brought the world to a standstill.
The claims that caused lockdowns were 3-10% death rate.
The world was brought to a standstill primarily due to massive fearmongering. The earliest high rates came from three things: Conflation of "infection" and "case", rationing of tests to people doctors were already pretty sure had been exposed (suppressing the denominator and inflating the rate), and biased samples (for example the Diamond Princess cruise ship was weighted towards the most susceptible population and maxed out 1.2% a month after the lockdowns had begun).