"The death rate is, according to Beijing's numbers, about two per cent"
The numbers here simply don't add up. The virus tracker web page takes data from China and shows, this morning, 493 deaths vs 915 people recovered. Even accepting that the majority of the early cases are older or less healthy individuals who are less able to battle the virus (and therefore more likely to show up at a hospital in the early days of the pandemic) there's a long way to go to be certain of 2%.
That said the Chinese have clearly reacted much more sensibly this time around, given the relatively low levels of infection outside mainland China.
For those who are interested, the virus tracker web page is here: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
