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Are We Overreacting to Coronavirus?
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reports that since 2010, at least 12,000 Americans have died annually from influenza. In 2017-18, the worst year, 45 million were stricken with the disease, 810,000 required hospitalization and 61,000 died.
Yet life in the republic went on. The economy didn’t crater. Major events weren’t canceled, travelers traveled. Media outlets reported the numbers but didn’t wig out over them. Around half of Americans didn’t bother to take the vaccine.
This year, there have been 32 million cases of influenza and 18,000 deaths in the US so far. As of this writing, there are about 1,000 cases of coronavirus and 30 deaths or .016% the number of influenza deaths in roughly the same time period. My state of Arizona‘s numbers are six cases, zero deaths. Zero.
New cases of coronavirus are already declining in China. Yet the world is in a full-blown panic. Financial markets are in free fall, massive quarantines have been instituted with more contemplated, airline flights and numerous public events have been canceled.
Clearly this is not a rational response to the medical data. Some ascribe the overreaction to uncertainty, but the more we learn, the less the coronavirus seems particularly unusual.
In most cases, coronavirus is clinically indistinguishable from influenza or other minor respiratory illnesses. It is experienced by most patients as a cough, low-grade fever, and sore throat. Coronavirus may be somewhat more contagious than influenza.
Fatality rates are difficult to calculate because most of those infected don’t enter the medical system. Early on, a World Health Organization official received much attention for predicting a casualty rate over 6%, a figure which could have eventually resulted in significant mass casualties.
Experience and cooler heads have since prevailed. The New England Journal of Medicine estimates an overall fatality rate of around 0.1%, almost all in elderly patients. Children usually don’t even become ill.
Still, the need for strong, calm leadership in the face of all the chaos and disruption should finally bring together our political leaders in the spirit of cooperation for the public good, right? Dream on. We got instead transparent attempts to exploit the crisis for political advantage.
Nancy Pelosi said she didn’t “think the president knows what he’s talking about“ and termed his proposed response “completely inadequate.” Chuck Schumer agreed that “all the warning lights are flashing bright red” but “Trump has no plan, no urgency, no understanding of the facts.” Joe Biden claimed Trump “has defunded — he’s defunding CDC.”
Actually, not true. According to the Associated Press, funding has increased for our federal health agencies which “aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.” Moreover, the public health system does have a plan in place for outbreaks of respiratory diseases and “a playbook to follow regardless of who is president.”
Trump, in the judgment of most, did a decent job of quieting anxiety and describing federal prevention efforts. But he didn’t help his cause by talking about his “hunches” and failing initially to acknowledge that caseloads would almost certainly grow from their present numbers.
Meanwhile, the media, as usual, fully backed those trying to create panic. Single new cases have received headline treatment. The reporting has been sensationalized with “pandemic“ and “crisis” used to describe a handful of cases. Virus related developments are described in tones of heightened urgency.
All flu viruses are public health threats. Infected people are contagious well before they develop symptoms, which confounds many prevention strategies. Close monitoring, testing, and immunizations when available are all sound interventions.
Isolation strategies may need to ratchet up if future conditions warrant. Meanwhile, increased attention to personal hygiene, staying home when sick, and avoiding infected persons also make sense.
This virus will undoubtedly sicken and kill more Americans before it runs its course, which it will. But the near-total disruption of our social fabric isn’t due to a virus. It’s us. It’s fear itself.
It’s simply bizarre to see a society breaking down over a virus 1,000 times less prevalent than others we have experienced and are experiencing. We have somehow become less resilient. We have lost confidence in ourselves and our institutions. Americans were once made of sterner stuff.
Published in Healthcare
Wrong, wrong, wrong. For a time, the number was ca. .6%. Then, it rose to a bit more than .8% (where it is now). Go to the Johns Hopkins website, which reports for Korea 66 dead and 7869 diagnosed. If the fatality rate is .8%, this disease is eight times as contagious as the flu in the worst flu epidemic we have had in recent decades. This percentage may, however, be a bit high. In Korea, something like 200,000 have been tested, and the population is comparable to that of Italy. The Koreans have tested those who, they think, might have been exposed — and they moved very quickly after the first cases to trace the social networks in search of those likely to have been exposed. But they may have missed a lot of cases (we will soon know — for they will know what they missed if those outside the networks they have traced get very sick and need hospitalization).
The CDC here has been useless. Last week they managed to test 77 individuals. So, except with regard to fatalities (a trailing, not a leading, indicator), we are operating in the dark. If the reproduction rate here is comparable to that in Wuhan (2.8%), the disease will spread rapidly — with the number infected doubling or tripling every few days. Closing schools, churches, synagogues, etc. and social distancing practiced by individuals can greatly retard this — as the Taiwanese and the folks from Hong Kong and Singapore have shown.
There is no reason to panic, but there is no reason to be complacent. If we can slow this down and if the warm weather to come affects Covid-19 in the way it affects the flu we can dodge the fate of the people of Hubei, the Italians in the north, and the Iranians. That second “if” reflects wishful thinking on my part (and on the part of a great many other individuals), but that thinking could, nonetheless, very well be right. That is what happens with other coronaviruses.
The fly in the ointment is that, if this bit of speculation is true, Covid-19 is apt to reappear in November. If we are lucky in the way I have outlined and if we are prudent — i.e., if we construct more isolation units in our hospitals, and stock the pertinent drugs and the respirators required — we might be able to blunt this.
You should not — given what we know now and what we can reasonably surmise — believe those who deny the significance of this (they would have to explain Wuhan, Italy, and Iran). Nor should you suppose that the sky is falling. Things may well get rough, but this, too, will pass.
Okay, so I was a decimal point off. Geez. That’s still a lot lower than 6% and much, much lower than the 17% figure some here were talking about.
Aerosol not just droplets…does that mean someone can spread it just by breathing?
See this comment by Ontheleft on another thread. Towards the bottom, he talks about viral aerosol.