I think this is not an appropriate description. This virus appears to cause a severe occasionally fatal pneumonia in a proportion of people infected. The common cold does not cause fatal pneumonia.
The actual fatality rate does not need to be high to cause problems for modern health care systems. If you just have a surge in people with pneumonia requiring hospital care e.g. oxygen this can be crippling for the care system. If the infection is transmissible then this leads to a huge need for isolation facilities which may be limited.
Some actual facts.
https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/clinical-management-of-novel-cov.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...s-epidemiology-virology-and-clinical-features
I said, "
a really nasty cold no one has immunity to spreading around the world."
If you hear that as "the common cold" then you don't understand what I mean. And if you believe, "The common cold does not cause fatal pneumonia," you are mistaken.
RSV causes common cold symptoms.
https://www.cdc.gov/rsv/research/us-surveillance.html
Each year in the United States, RSV leads, on average, to—
2.1 million outpatient visits among children younger than 5 years old-1
57,527 hospitalizations among children younger than 5 years old-1
177,000 hospitalizations among adults older than 65 years-2
14,000 deaths among adults older than 65 years-2
Why aren't people panicked about that?
Pertussis reemerged in epidemic proportions more than a decade ago.
https://www.cdc.gov/pertussis/countries/index.html
In 2018, the World Health Organization external icon (WHO) reported 151,074 pertussis cases globally. Based on 2008 data WHO estimated that there were 89,000 deaths. However, a publication modeling pertussis cases and deaths with data from 2014 estimates that there were 24.1 million pertussis cases and 160,700 deaths in children younger than 5 years worldwide.
Why aren't people panicked about that?
Current influenza status:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/?deliveryName=USCDC_7_3-DM17996
CDC estimates that so far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths from flu.
Why aren't people panicked about that?
This new virus strain is going to spread around the world. There's a certain point where it is too late to put the genie back in the bottle and this has passed that point. It will be severe in some populations, especially the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions.
We've not heard yet about cases in India, and countries in Africa.
https://africatimes.com/2020/01/22/theres-mounting-concern-for-africas-exposure-to-new-coronavirus/
Most of the top destinations from Wuhan Tianhe airport are in Asia, with the exception of two Australian airports and one in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, according to a rapid report for the Journal of Travel Medicine. Dubai has long served as a travel hub for passengers to and from the African continent, surpassed only by Addis Ababa in 2018. Among others, Air China operates flights between Shenzhen and Johannesburg, while China Southern flies between Nairobi and Shenzhen, according to Forward Keys industry analysts.
China has had a growing financial interest in Africa for a couple decades. It is unlikely there are no cases in African countries yet. One thing we learned in extensive planning when H5N1 flu threatened to explode into a pandemic was the lack of public health infrastructure in many African countries and major cities. India had similar problems.
It was suggested that if a novel fu outbreak wasn't stopped in the first few weeks, we would not be able to stop it. The reason and why that differed from SARS was, with flu one has millions of mild cases that go under the radar.
Assessment of US hospital capacity including ICU capacity was done during flu pandemic planning. With a novel coronavirus there could be a problem but it won't likely be a total disaster.
From WHO
On [22 Jan 2020], the members of the Emergency Committee expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the Committee should be reconvened in a matter of days to examine the situation further.
ProMed Moderator comment:
[The suggestion of the committee of the need for a more graded system of alerts to replace the current black-or-white "it's a PHEIC" vs "it's not a PHEIC" is an excellent suggestion. The current system permits politics to enter into the equation, leading to direct economic impacts on the countries are confronting the binary choice of "bad" versus "good" rather than "not so bad", "cautionary bad".... - Mod.MPP]
Given all that, what is it you expect me to post? I look at the media hype and my past experience with these threats and want to point out the media is very much hyping this story. Yes, they should be reporting about the attempts of China to isolate whole cities. That's a huge story. The cases showing up in different countries is an important story.
But they continue to call it "the
deadly coronavirus" Do they call influenza, "the deadly influenza"? The deadly pertussis outbreak? The media might commonly add those adjectives from time to time, generally about clusters of deaths that occur intermittently.
This is a bad pathogen. No one has immunity. It is going to spread around the world like a wildfire. The fatality rate will not be in the millions, maybe 10s of thousands worldwide, but not millions. It will be high among older people and people with preexisting conditions. I fit that category because I'm on a high dose of prednisone.
I already checked, waterless hand cleaners with high enough alcohol content will destroy the virus on your hands. I already wash my hands all the time. I will be making sure I have waterless hand cleaner in my car and purse. I'll be more conscientious about all that for a while.
There is nothing to panic about. And it is going to spread.
