What’s the Big Deal About the Coronavirus?
I talk to a lot of people who wonder and sometimes get upset at the panic and drama surrounding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The yearly flu, they argue, kills a lot more people yet life just goes on. The yearly flu does kill up to 49,000 people in the US and the case fatality rate, CFR (seriousness of infection) for the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic in developed countries was up to 0.01% (killed 10 out of every 100,000 people it affected). Covid-19 on the other hand is currently killing up to 9 people out of 100 confirmed cases in Italy. Early Covid-19 transmissibility data from Wuhan, China show that each person infected can in turn infect 1.5-3.5 other people with a reproduction number, R0 of 2.6 (R-naught measures “contagiousness”). Compare that with an R0 of 1.28 for the seasonal flu, 1.46 for the 2009 H1N1 Flu Pandemic, and 1.80 for the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 500 million people worldwide. These data show that Covid-19 is a more dangerous virus than the seasonal flu and warnings to “flatten” its curve in the US through mitigation and suppression is supported by the savage and havoc the virus is causing in an ill-prepared Italy where hospitals are overwhelmed. Covid-19 thus have the potential to kill more people (up to 2.2 million people in the US if left unchecked) by virtue of its shedding, transmission, infectivity, presentation and type of symptoms, severity of illness, length of hospitalization, lack of treatment, and cause of death.
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