Is COVID-19 like the flu? And do we need to practice social distancing?
When the flu was a new disease (1918 to 1920) it infected 25% of and killed off 1% of the worlds poplulation. Many of those deaths occurred because there were not enough healthy people to take care of the sick people. This means that for a population of 327.2 million (the current population of the United States), it killed off over 3 million people.
COVID-19 and the flu are both contagious viruses that pass easily from person to person and cause respiratory illness. Symptoms and treatment for both diseases are similar. Like the flu in 1918, COVID-19 today is spreading through a population that has no built up immunities, no vaccines and no treatments beyond palative care.
By some estimates, if COVID-19 is left unchecked, about 2 million Americans will require an ICU (hospital intensive care unit). America has about 113,000 ICUs. (327.2 million people; 34.7 ICUs per 100,000 people). Which means that about 2 million Americans will not get the treatment they need to save their lives.
So if we treat COVID-19 like we treat the flu today and do not practice social distancing then we can expect to see many millions of Americans to die in the next year or two.
Fact sources:
https://www.livescience.com/new-coronavirus-compare-with-flu...
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-hospital-beds-pe...
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85462
Comments
Most Will Get Covid-19
People with no medical background think that we are trying to STOP it. The truth is that we are trying to slow the rate of spread so that the Hospitals are not overwhelmed.
Agreed
We are now performing a rear guard action, in military parlance, trying to delay an enemy who has bypassed the Maginot Line (a worthless defense line for a given enemy) and buying time to bring up reinforcements, improve weaponry, and beef up fortifications.
We are now effectively refugees trying to runaway for now from an onrushing enemy, so to speak, using the Russian WW2 strategy of scorched earthing while retreating as to starve and slow the enemy down.
In may ways it is worse,
An exposed virus can live up to 2 days on a surface. And it is much more contagious. I am staying in until strategies to control its spread are developed. There will be scammers, who will try to take advantage. Hope they are given the punishment they deserve.
Actually
Depending on the surface this one is showing a life of up to 72 hours on plastic/stainless steel. https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/new-coronavirus-stable...
I am watching this closely and don't like how this is progressing at the exponential rate you would project as some sort of worst case scenario here in the US. With NYC and LA now being told not to test anyone not admitted to the hospital that growth may look to slow, but I would guess it's going to still be growing at that same rate. By running the growth rate, by the 1st of April we'll start seeing major problems, by the middle of April it'll be pretty widespread unless people stay in.
Unfortunately as said above though, we will most likely all have this sometime in the next 18 months before a vaccine is available. This'll be something we'll be able to vaccinate future generations with... but we'll probably all contract it on our own. Our only hope is to slow it so that ICUs are available for the worst cases. Right now though... well let's just say things aren't looking good for us in the US. We just don't have the testing available to be able to know whom needs to specifically make sure is absolutely contagious and needs to be isolated.
Fortunately about 80% of people will get over this pretty easily. Sadly the 20% of a large population will inevitably include a lot of our loved ones who will struggle and perhaps not make it.
Recent laboratory studies show......
That this number may be as high as ten days.
What many people do not understand, is that a virus is not truly “alive” as we normally define the term. It is a very simple organism, which basically consists of a sheath surrounding a bundle of RNA (ribonucleic acid) - a substance found in all living cells. Essentially, it exists to multiply. It performs no other function, and it can only multiply by infecting a living cell.
A virus basically attaches itself to a living cell and injects RNA into the cell. The RNA then causes the living cell to produce more virus, filling the cell with viral material, until the cell eventually bursts - spreading more virus as it does so.
This is very simplified, but basically what happens.
As a virus is not “alive” like a cell, it is not affected by anti-biotic drugs - which by definition attack living organisms like bacterium. Hence why treatment by anti-biotics, no matter how powerful, has no impact at all. In fact, that course of treatment can actually contribute to the illness by weakening the host. How many people have taken anti-biotics and ended up with intestinal problems?
Viruses occur everywhere in nature, but for some unknown reason, bats are massive viral carriers. They carry numerous viruses, and seem to be immune to them. This may be why there seems to be a larger incidence of new viral outbreaks in Asia than other areas. Many Asian cultures eat foods which the rest of the world does not - bat being a good example. In most of the world, bats are either seen as pests, or even the brunt of deep-seated cultural fears. In other words, we avoid them, while they do not.
Trump and his crew of idiots continue to refer to the virus which causes Covid-19 as “the Chinese virus”, even though it has become an international problem now. It is stupidity and prejudice to refer to it this way, and is an obvious attempt to play to his redneck base, who carry the same prejudice as he does. Bottom line, his bigotry serves no purpose other than to push people apart at a time when we need to work together to get through this.
From quarantine,
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Delayed response
We were bound to have a pandemic eventually but ‘somebody’ (no prizes now) eviscerated the CDC, eliminating the pandemic response team. At this point it is a case of barn door and horses instead of meeting it head on, treating SARS and MERS as warnings to be prepared.
'Spot on' information and good comments; More
Best info that I know of is from USA CDC, please explore it:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
A longer explanation as to why the world-wide 'distancing' and travel/contact restrictions seem both so sudden and so extreme:
https://youtu.be/fgBla7RepXU
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"Hunker down", and be the best hermit you can be.
Especially work hard to avoid/delay exposure if you are a 'high(er) risk' person - older, and/or have pre-existing condition such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes - the last three probably cover half of us who are over 45-50 years.
To clarify...
The "Flu" you are referring to was the 1918 Spanish Influenzaa H1N1 strain (an Avian flu), Influenza wasn't a new disease then, The Flu mutates every year, some years the strain is like the current one, with a fairly low mortality rate, with "only" around 22,000 deaths in the U.S. and some years it is much more virulent, as the epidemic of 1918 was, which killed an estimated 675,000 Americans.
The mortality rate of this Coronavirus is a small fraction of the Spanish Influenza, with rates being hard to estimate due to the high rate of asymptomatic carriers. but is less than 4% vs around 20% for the Spanish flu.
The Coronavirus is certainly not a new thing, their are many varieties including SARS, MERS and just garden variety ones that are no worse than a common cold. I've worked in health care for about 20 years at this point, and we see patients with Coronavirus infections every year, it's one of an assortment of respiratory diseases including Rhino Virus, Adenovirus, and RSV that pop up every year.
What makes this one different, is how it crossed over from animals to humans, and is a new strain never seen before in humans with a high transmission rate and a relatively high mortality.
While I don't think it will be anywhere near as bad as the Spanish Flu, we certainly don't want it killing anyone, and its with no doubt a very serious illness. Older people and people with serious medical conditions are most at risk for serious health problems, and we need to do everything we can to spread out the infection curve so we are able to take care of those that get it. This is also the main difference in the two epidemics, we have much better health care now than in 1918, and their are already promising treatments being explored for this disease as well as vaccines being trialed now. The other difference is the way the 1918 flu affected people, young people were just as at risk as older people, due to a unique combination of traits, it was much more prone to cause a secondary Pneumonia, which was what did the killing, much as COVID-19 does, but on a grander scale.
EDIT: a good link to the history of the most deadly epidemic in the history of man.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-1...
Good post, thank you.
Good post, thank you.
But re: "The mortality rate of this Coronavirus is a small fraction of the Spanish Influenza, with rates being hard to estimate due to the high rate of asymptomatic carriers. but is less than 4% vs around 20% for the Spanish flu."
The mortality rate for the Spanish Flu of 1918 was far less than 20%. There were about 675,000 deaths in the US, as you said, (which would imply only 3.375 million infections) but most of the population was infected. So the mortality rate was probably comparable to Covid-19.
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
thanks
Data suggests that the mortality rate in places like South Korea is at 0.7% in places with less effective measures, such as Italy is at an astonishing 5%, so my numbers were off about that as well, I wasn't paying attention when I was writing that.
Spanish Flu mortality rates varied in a similar manner depending on which wave of the Flu and where it was, some areas were barely affected with low mortality rates, but some remote areas, the mortality rate was a effectively 100%, some remote island villages and some Alaskan small villages from what I have read.
funny thing
coronaviruses usually have cold or flu like symptoms for most people. Which is one of the reasons this one is spreading so quickly because most people ignore cold or flu like symptoms, which means they spread the virus by not knowing they are infected.
social distancing and frequent handwashing is a good practice to slow the rate of catching it.
Who knows depending on area it may be containable to a certain degree.
There is reports of possible vaccine for July.
According to wikipedia the cold or flu virus is technically a coronavirus.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Re: "There is reports of possible vaccine for July.
According to wikipedia the cold or flu virus is technically a coronavirus."
A vaccine in July? No. A vaccine will take at least 12-18 months. But a treatment that might reduce the severity and death rate might be available soon, or not.
IIRC the common cold is a coronavirus, but flu is not.
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Colds
About 1/3 of colds are caused by mild strains of coronavirus. Other colds are caused by rhinovirus, adenovirus or other strains. Remember that terms like coronavirus and rhinovirus are equivalent to "ungulates" or "carnivores" among mammals: major divisions of how the critters are put together.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Colds
It’s too much of a hope if you happened to have had a cold that had a strain of corona virus related to covid 19 you may have partial immunity. It may explain some people having milder cases.
Just to add something.
Just to add something.
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-nobel-laureate-...
Now, even with the suggested rate of infection via the article (20% in optimum conditions, on board the Diamond Princess), this is still an atrocious virus, and social distancing/quarantine is the only way to slow it.
Is it like the flu? Yes. Absolutely. There are no real treatments other than supportive measures, and to keep from getting it, you wash your hands, stay away from sick people, clean multi-user contact surfaces, and keep your distance from others if you can. Also, masks don't work, unless they're N95 or similar. Masks are more to keep sick people from passing it _on_.
Again, is it like the flu? Only sort of. Coronavirus tend to target the lungs and sinus more, and this particular strain - SARS-Cov-2 - seems to move into a pneumonia far more often than influenza.
One of the problems with what the CDC is reporting (and the guy at the top) is that they're quoting from various statistics, even if they conflict. For example, they claim a .1% mortality rate - from influenza itself. I believe this is deliberately ignoring the real mortality statistics, which are under a different statistic, called "Pneumonia & Influenza". For an eleven week period in the 2017/2018 flu season, it hit over 10% mortality.
Something else to keep in mind. The 1918 flu epidemic was exacerbated by people attempting to treat it with high, often lethal, doses of aspirin. They didn't fully understand how aspirin builds up in the body until the 1960's. So, it's hard to compare an epidemic from a century ago to even the modern influenza seasons.
So, wash your hands. Disinfect your portable devices with alcohol (don't use sanitizing wipes and such - they'll just coat the glass with nasty stuff. I use alcohol wipes). Get sleep, take a multivitamin, take a walk every day. Keep your distance from people, but don't panic. Stores will be open. Toilet paper will eventually be back on the shelves.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.