Coronavirus scare overshadows real threat
What if I told you there was a virus floating around that will kill around 3,500 Canadians in a year and hospitalize more than 12,000?
And what if I said this virus is highly contagious and can spread from person to person through airborne droplets?
It tends to hit older people the hardest, but it is also a risk for babies and children, pregnant women, Aboriginals, people with multiple health conditions and even healthy, middle-aged folks?
This virus causes a high fever, coughs, body aches and pain, headaches, exhaustion, a sore throat and a runny nose. If you are unlucky enough to get it, you’ll feel like you’ve just been run down by an 18-wheeler.
And I’m not talking about the novel coronavirus, which, at present, has infected a total of three Canadians, none of whom have died at the time of this writing.
I’m not diminishing the dangers and risks of a contagion we’ve never seen before and that is now rampaging through China. And I appreciate the efforts being taken to contain it in China and to prepare for it here.
But it is interesting to observe reaction, focus and fear over this coronavirus when the real elephant is in the room with us, right here, right now.
The flu.
And yet, so many people seem so lackadaisical and uneducated about the lowly flu, or influenza A and B, as medical specialists characterize it.
As an example, listen to people who describe themselves as having a “touch of the flu.” I’m sorry, but there is no such thing as a “touch” of the flu.
The flu is a serious virus that can kill you.
What you most likely have is a rhinovirus, otherwise known as the common cold. If you are like me, the cold feels like someone stuffed your head with cotton balls. Unpleasant, yes. Deadly, probably not.
I say this because I’m not sure that people take the flu as seriously as they should. Conflating the flu with the cold is evidence of this.
I suppose I should declare here that I may be more aware of the flu than some. In 2009, my son was stricken by the flu, during the pandemic known as H1N1. I’d had sick kids before, but I’d never seen a kid this sick and feverish. I recall thinking he might burn up and die. It scared the living daylights out of me.
Those feelings linger in the memory banks. (I also had an encounter with Andrew Wakefield, the godfather of the anti-vaxxing movement. But that is another story.)
That is part of the reason why I’m religious about getting the flu shot and why I’ve been known to evangelize on the subject (and the MMR vaccination) in this column and elsewhere.
I’ve often thought that if anti-vaxxers and flu-shot “refuseniks” were ever touched by a very, very sick child, they might be less hesitant.
And the flu this season has been particularly virulent for children and young people, with more being admitted to hospital and at least one death of a Grade 12 student in Manitoba.
This week, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a global public health emergency.
Good. We ought to take this seriously.
Now let’s get more serious about the flu, because at the moment, it’s still killing more of us than this coronavirus.
So my message is this: wash your hands often, get your flu shot and don’t go to China.