Covid-19: An introduction and summary
(March-May 2020)
- Start with my A timeline of Covid-19.
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How deadly is Covid-19?
See this article
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What is the difference between the flu and covid?
See this article
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What kind of vaccines are being developed?
See this article
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Is there any cure/treatment?.
See this article
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Are young people immune?
See this article
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Does blood type make a difference?
See this article
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What tests are available?
See this article
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How did it spread in so many places?
See this article
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Can it mutate into something even more dangerous?
See this article
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How did east Asia contain it?
See this article
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What explains the diffent death rates in different countries?
See this article
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Are face masks useful?
See this article
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Was covid-19 made in a Chinese lab? in a US lab?
See this article
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How does it compare with the pandemics of 1957 and 1968?
There have been two pandemics between the "Spanish" flu of 1918 (that was really born in the USA, despite the nickname) and the covid pandemic.
Both the 1957 and the 1968 pandemics probably started in China and both spread to the rest of Asia and to the Western countries, killing more than one million people worldwide.
In order to compare the covid pandemic with those pandemics, one has to keep in mind that health care has improved dramatically.
In 1968 and especially in 1957 many more people were dying of the seasonal flu than today.
The death rate for the flu went from 10.2 deaths per 100 000 population in the 1940s to 0.56 per 100 000 by the 1990s (source).
So in 1957 you were probably 20 times more likely to die of the flu than today,
and in 1968 probably 10 times more likely.
Second, the 1968 pandemic didn't kill many more Westerners than the regular one.
Germany (west+east) lost 50,000 people. This was a big number but probably not a shockingly big number.
Third, in 1968 most of the deaths happened in China and other Asian communist countries, of which we Westerners knew very little.
So the Western countries didn't make a big deal of the 1968 pandemic.
In 1957-58 about 100,000 people died of the flu in the USA: today (January 2021) we're already up to 425,000 with covid. The UK lost 33,000 people back then: today the UK has already passed 100,000.
Even adjusted to population, those were much smaller numbers (the USA had half the population of today, the UK 52 million instead of today's 67).
And, again, in the 1950s any flu was killing 20 times more people than today,
so actually that pandemic was not much more deadly than a regular year, so,
while deadly, it didn't stand out the way the covid pandemic stands out compared with the flu of the previous year.
Finally, the verdict on this one is still out.
Those two ended by themselves. No vaccines, no herd immunity: the pandemic just petered out.
We'll see what this one does.
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If you catch it and survive it, are you then immune to it?.
It is too early to know the answer. With most viruses, that is indeed the case.
At least for a few months, you are immune. Some people catch the flu every
year so obviously that immunity is not a lifelong immunity (if nothing else,
because the virus mutates rapidly).
In the case of someone who fully recovered from covid-19, it is not clear how long the immunity lasts.
Already in January, China reported cases of people getting reinfected.
By mid-April, South Korea had counted 116 people who tested positive again after having recovered from covid-19.
This could mean several things and we don't know which one is true: the patients were infected again (this would be the worst-case scenario), the virus "reactivated" itself in these patients, or the tests were faulty.
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How long does the virus survive? Can it be spread by touching objects?
According to a study by the National Institutes of Health , the virus can remain suspended in the air for up to three hours, and can last four hours on copper, 24 hours on cardboard and two to three days on plastic and stainless steel. But similar coronaviruses can last much longer on surfaces. If covid-19 resembles the SARS and MERS ones, it can last on surfaces for even nine days (Journal of Hospitalization). By comparison, flu viruses normally don't last longer than 48 hours on most surfaces. The good news is the typical disinfectants (like bleach) can kill coronaviruses within a minute.
While scientific evidence is still missing, the chances that one touches an
object that got a virus from someone who is infected are very low: the infected
person needs to sneeze or cough or spit on that object just in the place
where you will put your hand.
The most likely places would be crowded public transportation that is not
frequently sanitized.
I would be more concerned about animals than objects: the fur of your dog
is an excellent place for a virus to survive a long time.
The virus can spread via both droplets (which are big assemblies of the virus) and aerosols (which are small droplets). The difference between the two is that droplets are heavy and fall immediately to the floor, whereas aerosols can float in the air for hours, especially in places where there is no ventilation.
H.I.V. is not airborne (you don't catch it by breathing), measles is.
This one is too: you can catch it just by breathing in a place where an infected person was standing for a few minutes.
The more dangerous places are restaurants, movie theaters, churches/mosques/temples, public transportation that doesn't have windows that you can open, offices that don't have windows that you can open, etc. More and more buildings will be required to use ultraviolet light and filtering systems to make sure that aerosols are killed.
The safer places are in your own house, where only your family has been breathing, talking, singing, etc, and outdoors (i am not sure that i agree with the governments that closed down beaches and parks).
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Do animals catch covid? Can they spread covid?
Yes to both.
Dogs and cats, the most common pets, seem to suffer very little but the real concern is whether they can also spread it, and whether they could incubate a more deadly mutation. Covid is due to a zoonotic virus, a virus that was transmitted to humans by an animal. The last thing we want to see is a mutation of this virus spreading to humans via cats or dogs.
This is not an unlikely scenario. In November 2020 Denmark decided to exterminate its entire population of mink after humans got infected by a covid mutation coming from mink.
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Will the virus die out in the summer?
So far we have zero evidence that this virus doesn't like warm weather.
The two worst-hit countries in Europe are Italy and Spain, which are also among
the warmest. Hot countries like
Ecuador, Peru, Indonesia and Brazil seem to be highly infected although we don't really know their death rates.
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How will it end?
See this article
See also:
The evolution of the pandemic in numbers
Covid-19: How it may change the World,
The Clown & the Virus,
The Clown & the Virus - Part 2,
Trump's Virus,
Sinophobia & Covid-19,
Sinophobia & Covid-19 in US Media,
TM, ®, Copyright © 2020 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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