St. Jude just held a seminar addressing many of the concerns regarding the outbreak of the 2019 novel corona virus so, I wanted to share some of the key take-aways, many of them being inspired by the common misconceptions I hear people spreading.
The bullets I am providing in this post are derived from the sources below:
Mark Denison, MD, Chair of Infectious Diseases – Vanderbilt University
Hana Hakim, MD, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Janet England, MD, University of Washington School of Medicine
Joshua Wolf, PhD, Infectious Diseases, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Miguela Cantina, MD, Director or Global Infectious Diseases, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Michael Osterholm, PhD, University of Michigan, Director of Infectious Diseases
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
John Hopkins School of Medicine
The most common misconception discounting the gravity of the potential pandemic is the comparison between the seasonal flu and COVID-19. People are citing the fact that most people affected with the novel corona virus will experience only mild symptoms (that is true, no knowledgeable person is saying that if you get the corona virus you’re going to die), that the mortality rate is only 1% (true but that statistic, on its own, is misleading in regard to the potential severity of the spread of the virus) and that “if you don’t freak out because of the seasonal flu, you shouldn’t freak out about this” (I’m not even really sure what that means).
These are the facts:
– Local news stations are not helping the situation. (Please, don’t Lysol your kids).
– There are MANY different strains of the Corona virus of which we’ve been aware for a long time. (Just because the back of the Clorox container says “human corona virus” doesn’t mean that COVID-19 isn’t new)
– COVID-19 has never existed in humans before now; therefore, we have NO existing immunity to this virus.
– There are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments available for slowing COVID-19 spread although there are some that are currently beginning clinical trials.
– The notion that this virus could have been man-made is nonsense.
– The average incubation period for COVID-19 is 5 days and can extend up to 21 days. The incubation period for the seasonal flu is about two days. This means, that in the case of COVID-19, you could contract the virus and become contagious long before you become symptomatic and have the opportunity to take measures against spreading the disease with whom you interact.
– The belief that COVID-19 is spread ONLY through close contact with the infected is FALSE. Transmission is the novel virus can occur through the air and occurs after extended periods of exposure within 6 feet of an individual that is infected.
– Wearing traditional ear-loop masks might lower the risk of you infecting someone else, but it won’t prevent you from being infected.
– The best approach to avoiding the impact the virus has on us is avoiding things that might promote its spread i.e avoiding large crowds and travel through places where the virus has been confirmed.
– As it stands, the COVID-19 mortality rate is roughly 1%. The seasonal flu is .1%. That is 10x less the mortality rate of the novel corona virus.
– COVID-19 is far more contagious than the seasonal flu. Estimated to be a little over twice as contagious.
– Death toll and mortality rates are different. Because of the differences in the rates that these viruses are spread, it is estimated that COVID-19 could be 20-30x more deadly than the WORST seasonal flu.
– There is no evidence that COVID-19 is seasonal. (Neither is the seasonal flu but it does migrate from hemisphere to hemisphere according to seasonal changes)
– Aside from the death toll, a very valid concern is the overwhelming of the US health care system that is not prepared to take on an epidemic of this magnitude. Other countries are already having to turn down symptomatic patients. There are roughly 327 million citizens in the US and roughly 900,000 hospital beds. Those aren’t available beds. That’s total beds.
A few interesting comments that Dr. Denison made was that no one really knows what’s going to happen- good or bad. For now, the virus is in charge until we have an answer for containment and/or irradication. Because it takes so long to develop new vaccines, the likely answer to how bad this will get will be “how quickly can we build an immunity to this?”
Taken together, this information makes it clear that this is not another seasonal flu virus, whether this evolves into a global pandemic or not.
To give a more practical comparison of COVID-19 vs seasonal flu threat, a disease with a high rate of fatality but low rate of spread that may only affect 100 people is ultimately not very deadly. But an illness with a mere 1% mortality rate that could lead to infection of a billion people is extremely threatening. The rate of infection is what makes COVID-19 potentially far more deadly than any seasonal flu we’ve ever experienced.
Again, this information is not from me or any news source. This points are taken from the sources listed above. Because none of this is my own research, I won’t be defending any points made in this post (Don’t tell me what Dr. Drew said). This isn’t to spark debate. Simply to provide the empirical evidence we currently have at our disposal.