system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If SARS-CoV (2002) and SARS-CoV-19 (aka COVID-19) are so similar (same family of virus, genetically similar, etc.), why did SARS infect around 8,000 while COVID-19 has already reached 1,000,000?

So, they’re both from the same family, and are similar enough that early cases of COVID-19 were assumed to be SARS-CoV instead. Why, then, despite huge criticisms in the way China handled it, SARS-CoV was limited to around 8,000 cases while COVID-19 has reached 1 million cases and shows no sign of stopping? Is it the virus itself, the way it has been dealt with, a combination of the two, or something else entirely?

EDIT! I’m an idiot. I meant SARS-CoV-2, not SARS-CoV-19. Don’t worry, there haven’t been 17 of the things that have slipped by unnoticed.
gpt
SARS-CoV-2 is worse than SARS-CoV because, paradoxically, it’s not as bad. SARS tended to have a faster disease onset and be more severe, so you had far fewer infectious people with mild or no symptoms walking around spreading the disease. In fact much of SARS spread was in hospitals, rather than on the street.  That made it relatively simple to identify and isolate potential spreaders. SARS-CoV-2, on the other hand, has many people spreading it who are not sick and who don’t isolate. 

Even so, SARS was just barely controlled. People are complacent today, but SARS came much closer to being a pandemic than most people realize.