USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Coronavirus offers cause for concern but not panic
This just in: A deadly virus spreading around the globe will result in the death of tens of thousands of Americans. We are certain about this because it always does. Its name is influenza. And as recently as the 2017- 18 season, it resulted in 61,000 American fatalities.
The death toll from the flu is worth noting in light of the coronavirus spreading through, and outside of, China. In the United States, the public health threat from the flu is far greater than that from the exotic new virus, and likely will remain that way.
The best advice for dealing with the coronavirus is to remain calm and act in ways that minimize the chances of contracting a variety of diseases. Don’t travel to China, for the time being. Wash your hands frequently. Get a flu shot if you haven’t already.
At this point the coronavirus looks a bit like sharks, snakes, terrorist attacks and other things that provoke disproportionate amounts of fear. While uncertainty about how the virus spreads is concerning, the rate at which it spreads does not look out of the ordinary. Maimuna Majumder, of Harvard University and Boston Children’s Hospital, says it is somewhere in the range of severe acute respiratory syndrome ( SARS) and well below that of measles.
As of Wednesday, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases was about 6,000, with 132 fatalities.
The fact that it is the first major outbreak in an era when social media usage has reached epidemic proportions makes it even a bigger source of fear. Even if this outbreak isn’t the “big one,” however, the coronavirus should serve as something of a warning about the changing world:
❚ Rapid development in Asia, Africa and elsewhere has resulted in millions of people from rural areas pouring into big cities, where diseases can become established and spread quickly.
❚ The loss of wild animal habitats, along with the preference in some countries for exotic game meat sold live in markets, puts humans more in contact with potential vectors.
❚ An explosion of air travel has meant that outbreaks in one part of the world can spread quickly to others.
❚ The excessive use of vaccines in animal production has accelerated the evolution of vaccine- resistant strains.
❚ Increases in atmospheric temperatures brought on by greenhouse gas emissions makes the planet a more fertile environment for disease.
Given all these factors, it seems likely that at some point a new disease, or a new strain of an existing one, will lead to a genuine pandemic. This is the lesson of history, which has been an ongoing battle between humanity and disease. The former generally wins, but there have been counterexamples.
The most obvious came in a 14th century outbreak of the bubonic plague in Europe and parts of Asia. It occurred at a time when cities were growing and medical science was nonexistent. The devastation was so great that it would take Europe two centuries to recover its lost population.
As recently as the winter of 1918- 19, a flu pandemic caused the deaths of an estimated 50 million people, or nearly 3% of the planet’s population at the time. Medicine had made major strides by then, but the first flu vaccine was still two decades off.
Even in a nation where health care accounts for 18 cents on every dollar, America devotes relatively few resources to vaccine production. With the world rapidly becoming a more fertile petri dish, we should not be surprised if outbreaks become more common and more lethal.
Given recent advances in medicine that have brought about longer lifespans and relatively few epidemics, it is easy to be complacent. But in the actions humans are taking, we are giving disease a fighting chance.