MERS has a low human-to-human transmission rate (R0 ~0.3), making an epidemic unlikely despite high mortality.

“because I think that that are not 0.3 really makes it not possible or not likely there's plenty of cases with murders where people went back to relatively poor country after having been a worker in Saudi Arabia were found to be infected and infected nobody so that nobody became ill from that patient even though they weren't really looked at that's as opposed to Korea where there's that one patient who are infected 186 people so there was a really a confluence of lots of bad luck about to have occurred”