In the wake of officials with Dallas County and the city of Dallas issuing “declarations of local disaster for public health emergency,” it is imperative that people are informed of the facts surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, not just locally but at a national level.  Accurate information is vital to an appropriate response.

And just for the record, hoarding toilet paper and face masks is not an appropriate response. But neither is dismissing this as nothing more than the flu or a common cold.

My cousin, Kirsten Nash, has done the research and compiled accurate, science-based information on COVID-19, and she has given me permission to republish her Facebook post here. Links to her sources are included at the bottom of this post.

— Tammye Nash

By Kirsten Nash, via Facebook:

For those of you saying ‘It is just a cold,’ or ‘I am way more worried about the flu,’ or saying that schools are ‘blowing things out of proportion,’ here are some critical differences between the two which are warrant why certain containment and social distancing measures are being enacted.

  1. Rate of Contagion: The infection spread rate for the flu is 1:1.3 (for every one person with the flu, they infect another 1.3 people). The rate for COVID-19 is 1:3.11 (at most recent estimate; some indicate that this is low). This matters even more given that the incubation period is longer than the flu, with the flu being 2-4 days and COVID-19 being 5.1 days, with some cases not seeing manifestation of the virus for up to 11 days. This means that people can be contagious longer and not even know it, because they have no symptoms, and during that time, they are infecting more people.
  2. Vaccines: Obviously there are no vaccines for COVID-19. No, it is not the same vaccine that is used for animals (that isn’t even the same virus, but I digress here). Health experts predict that they are at least a year out from developing a vaccine for this virus. The flu, on the other hand, has well-established vaccine protocol and roughly 52 percent of Americans get the vaccine each year. Even when they pick the wrong strains as they configure the vaccine cocktail for the year, getting the vaccine makes the symptoms of the flu far less worse for those who get it. Unlike the flu, there is also not an early treatment response protocol for COVID-19 that is easily accessible for people (such as Tamiflu for the flu). This means that if you get COVID-19, you get it. Your immune system alone is what will decide the severity.

AND, most importantly, there is this difference:

  1. Severity: A. Mortality — Much discussion has been made about the mortality rate of COVID-19. Early estimates were 2 percent, but the most recent update by the World Health Organization is 3.7 percent. And while that number may seem small, compared to the flu, which has a mortality rate of 0.1 percent, this number is quite large. Additionally, the mortality rate with COVID-19 is far higher in the elderly and those with existing heart and lung issues and those with compromised immune systems. For those over age 70, the mortality rate is far higher, with estimates closer to 11 percent.
  2. Hospitalization — Less information is being spread about the severity rate of the disease. Less than 2 percent of people with the flu have to be hospitalized for severe cases and most of those are for dehydration. For COVID-19, the hospitalization rate is 20 percent.

And here is where we get to the heart of the issue:  Our current healthcare system is not equipped to handle a rapid spike of the virus.

Here are some facts:

  1. Hospital Capacity — A conservative estimate of current hospital capacity in the U.S. is 75 percent. This means that our hospitals are currently 75 percent full. We had a later and more severe flu season, which is affecting this number, but the bottom line is that in the U.S., we only have 45,000 (yep, that is correct) ICU beds. We only have 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to China with 4.7 per 1,000 and South Korea and Japan, which have 12 per 1.000.
  2. Ventilator Supply — We only have 140,000 total ventilators in the U.S. That is for everyone, including those that are currently in use. If we see a high spike need caused by a spike in COVID-19 cases, then we will not have the supply to meet demand.
  3. Mask Supply — The U.S. government keeps a backup supply of the N95 masks for use in an outbreak like this. However, their supply of these masks is only at 12 million. That may seem like a high number, but Health and Human Services just released a report indicating that is only about 1 PERCENT of what they would need for a full U.S. pandemic level outbreak.

The three things above are why these measures (cancelling large scale events, closing colleges, limiting travel, etc.) are necessary. If we don’t ‘flatten the curve,’ then our healthcare infrastructure will crumble under the demand. That will lead to very bad things happening, such as workers not being properly protected and ultimately spreading the illness themselves or becoming infected;  safety protocols not being followed; supplies running out resulting in diminished safety protocols or treatment, and, most scary, horrible metrics being used to determine who gets care (wealth, age, or other factors).

IF we implement measures to contain and control, then we will likely not see a huge decrease in the number of overall US COVID-19 cases in total, but these cases will be spread out over a longer time period instead of there being huge spikes at the beginning. The huge spike is what we are trying to avoid.

So…

Yes, it sucks that you don’t get to go on vacation.

Yes, it sucks that you don’t get to debate in that super important tournament that you have been working your whole HS (or college) career for.

Yes, it sucks that you don’t get to go on your ‘once every two years, super awesome’ band trip.

Yes, it sucks that you don’t get to go to SXSW.

Yes, it sucks that NBA or March Madness is cancelled.

And even further…

Yes, it SUCKS that people in travel, entertainment or service industries will be impacted, many very dramatically, because of this.

Yes, it SUCKS that some people/agencies/government organizations are still putting profits over people.

Yes, it SUCKS that poor people are going to be impacted the most, as always — no access to internet for online school/classes, no lunch if school is cancelled, no housing if college tells them to leave dorms, no jobs if they were working at the university, etc.

These are all things that we should work to find solutions to in a way that is empathetic and that puts aside party differences to address the very real needs of these Americans.

But the protocols are necessary to prevent the overwhelming of the healthcare industry which result in things FAR WORSE than the above.

So stop downplaying. Stop calling it a hoax. Stop saying it is ‘not even as bad as the flu’. Stop saying it is a cold.

No, don’t go out and buy 50,00 rolls of toilet paper. But do make sure you have a plan for working from home. Discuss what you will do in the event of a quarantine or work from home situation. If you have kids, review hand washing protocols (though they aren’t really affected, they can spread the virus) and consider who will care for your kids if school is out — and think about NOT using people in the high risk age group. Think about staying home and doing some Netflix marathons (tons of good stuff on there), playing board games, reading, or, you know, actually talking to the folks with whom you share a roof.

And for the love of all that is holy, wash your damn hands.

I hope that this passes quickly and that containment happens faster. I fear, however, that this will get worse before it gets better. More things will be cancelled and we will have to work together so that this isn’t worse than it has to be.

LINKS:

From STATNews.com.
From ScienceDaily.com.
From VOX.com.
From NYTimes.com.
From ContagionLive.com.
From CNBC.com.
From WorldOMeters.info.
From The World Health Organization.
From a University of California/San Francisco Expert Panel.