Journal of the Virus Year: My experiences with the virus: March 15, 2020

I wasn't going to write again today until I started to read some of the comments on Facebook. I also have the first potential cases of infection from the coronavirus in my own family living in another state. In addition, the number of people infected in Utah began to rise dramatically in the last two days as testing finally began although presently, Utah’s state lab had the capacity to test only 41 patients a day for the disease. See "Utah patients who tried to get tested for coronavirus describe what happened."

The discussion on Facebook centered around the idea that "what's the big deal?" Those discussing the issue were reflecting the idea of a meme that is currently circulating that compares the Coronavirus COVID-19 to Influenza. Their discussion also reflects statements made by the President of the United States. If you are wondering why the coronavirus is such a big deal, I suggest you do your homework and start looking at some of the statements made by competent medical authorities. You can start with this article: "This Coronavirus Is Unlike Anything in Our Lifetime, and We Have to Stop Comparing It to the Flu." 

Here is the simple beginning of an explanation about the serious nature of this particular pandemic:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Track Reported Cases of COVID-19

What you see above is an exponential curve or an extremely rapid increase. This is from the Johns Hopkins, University of Medicine, Coronavirus Resource Center on March 15, 2020, and is tracking the number of Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases. Unfortunately in the United States, the number of cases is skewed downward by the lack of testing facilities. Quoting from an article entitled, "Coronavirus vs. the Flu: The Difference Between a 1% and 0.1% Fatality Rate Is Huge" in the National Review, 

Exponential growth of some diseases means that the number of Americans infected can multiply from a single case to 60 million in a year, as was the case with the H1N1 swine flu in 2009.

If you are listening to popular talk radio hosts comment on the coronavirus, you need to get your head out of the sand and start reading a variety of news articles from a huge variety of sources. Before writing a post like this one, I probably read 50+ articles from a huge variety of news media sources. Ultimately, I form an opinion based on what I believe to be my best evaluation of the most educated and competent authorities. The statement quoted above refers to the H1N1 Swine Flu of 2009 that had a death rate of .02% and infected between 700 million and 1.4 billion people. It is estimated that the swine flu epidemic of 2009 killed about 203,000 people. Here is one comparison of the mortality from the flu compared to the COVID-19 from the ProPublica article cited above (See https://www.propublica.org/article/this-coronavirus-is-unlike-anything-in-our-lifetime-and-we-have-to-stop-comparing-it-to-the-flu)

The flu kills less than 1% of infected people who are over age 65. By comparison, in China, COVID-19 killed 8% of those infected who were 70-79 and almost 15% of those infected who were age 80 or older. That’s a staggering difference.

Since I happen to fall into the 70-79 age category, I am taking all this about the coronavirus seriously.