by Kara Machowski
What is the difference between Influenza and Covid-19?
Last Wednesday President Trump stated that he was amazed to find out that tens of thousands of people die from the flu each year, and he’s a proclaimed germaphobe. He also slammed the media and Democrats for ramping up fear regarding novel coronavirus during a presidential rally. While Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff stated, “The flu kills people. This is not Ebola. It’s not SARS, it’s not MERS. It’s not a death sentence.”
As of right now, scientists theorize that the contamination rate for Covid-19 sits around 4-5, while the flu, or influenza, is between 1.3 to 1.5. The spread of the Covid-19 is nearly four times as much as influenza, which is why we shouldn’t compare the sicknesses or their mortality rate. There have also been numerous influenza pandemics, while this is the first time that the world has battled Covid-19. When SARS spread in 2003, only 8,000 were infected while the number of infects of novel coronavirus is over 90,000 and still growing at an unmeasurable rate. The CDC estimates that influenza has resulted in 9 million – 45 million illnesses per year and between 12,000 - 61,000 deaths, roughly 0.135 % of those who suffer from the flu annually. This is a mere percentage of the 90,000 infected with Covid-19 and 3,100 deaths as of December 2019, which sits today at roughly 6% (compared to those who have recovered), 46 times the amount of influenza deaths, and it’s only been four months since the outbreak. Granted, the number of influenza cases and deaths could be much higher without those who receive an annual influenza vaccine.
In 1918 the world saw a serious influenza pandemic, where it is estimated that one third of the world's population became infected. It's also estimated that the virus killed just 1%, which at the time was 50 million people world wide and half a million in the United States. The Covid-19 virus is said to cause 3.5% of deaths of those who are infected. Right now, the novel cornonavirus is unfortunately a great deal deadlier than the flu.
Why were states ill-prepared for testing novel coronavirus?
A majority of the reason that States were ill-prepared to test possible infects of novel coronavirus is because the Center of Disease Control mismanaged testing kits . On February 4th, the CDC sent out faulty testing kits around the United States. The CDC attempted to create their own testing kits, rather than use the one provided by WHO, the World Heath Organization. This resulted in hospitals across the country having to send their testing kits to the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, which delayed conclusions for days, while in-house testing kits take a few hours to one day to yield a result. Because of this, the CDC also created a strict criteria for those that they would allow to be tested. They required for a person to have had recently returned from traveling or having come in contact with someone who did, or a person who was infected, which could have resulted in the outbreaks in California and Washington. As of today, Washington is still having to authorize testing with the CDC and has to either send the tests to the Washington state's health department and other reports say they are still having to send tests to the CDC in Atlanta. This is worrisome to experts who are looking to North Korea who are to test about 10,000 people per day and have even created drive up testing facilities. Unfortunately, due to the mismanagement and inaccurate results, the CDC has stopped disclosing the number of Americans who have been tested, have the virus or the deaths that have occurred.
A reported 100 persons are infected in the US and now 11 dead, what does that mean?
The newest confirmed case was another death in Washington, which actually occurred on February 26th. The patient was brought to a hospital in Washington on February 24th of complications of what they thought was the flu. The patient did suffer from a preexisting illness, but what is concerning is that they were living with the illness for so long, contaminating an unknown amount of persons, and that it took so long to get the results back from the CDC. The number of those who are reported to those infected doesn’t add up to other statistics, even if it happened in a cluster. Because of ill-testing experts analyze that the number of those who are currently infected in the United States is much higher than being reported.
Why Wuhan is still on lock down?
Wuhan, being the epicenter of Covid-19, is still on lockdown, but many are asking ‘why?’. Scaling the calendar back to when experts theorize the virus originated in human form around the mid to end of November. The first recognized and reported illness came forth at the end of December and the first death, January 18th. By the time that China locked down Wuhan the infected rate was in the thousands. The US has only seen the first of the series of deaths as of this week. Reports of novel coronavirus could have occurred in Washington as early as mid-January, however they were unaware. Even though Washington has been the epicenter of deaths from the coronavirus, they only occurred in the same nursing home, which confounds experts as to how worried the state should be. Thus far there are only 31 reported cases in Washington (far less than mid-January in Wuhan) but no clear answer as to who is being quarantined, tested or observed.
CDC and other countries are working on a vaccine, but when would it hit the markets?
As of right now, the only drug that is being used to battle those who are infected is remdesivir. This is only being used to treat those who are infected in hopes that it lessons symptoms, but it isn’t a vaccine or a cure all in any sense. A recent report shows that a current vaccine has shown signs of fighting novel coronavirus as well a few others, but even if one is proven to work, it could be over a year before that drug is manufactured and distributed. One factors in testing is that it not only has to begin with animals before scientists can consider testing humans, they have to make sure that it doesn’t cause any other complications, especially in preexisting diseases. There are currently nine different companies and labs who are implementing testing of new vaccines and already known vaccines that have fought off diseases like Ebola.
Twitter : @KaraMachowski
Email : Artkara@hotmail.com
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