I am posting this from Facebook – this is a post by an Emergency Trauma Center doctor I used to work with. Her opinion and practice are well respected by myself and many others.
By Traci Ryan, Emergency Medicine.
“I’ve seen and heard several opinions about Corona (Covid 19) floating around and I thought that I’d weigh in strictly with some numbers, noting that the numbers are constantly changing as more data is available.
With that, please be careful comparing covid-19 and flu; Flu season is winding down and the stats are already in, “corona season” is just getting started.
From an epidemiological standpoint there are a few things to focus on when evaluating an infectious disease. Here are two of the important ones:
1- how contagious is it? For every flu positive person, that person infects an additional 1.2 people. In the case of Covid-19, every positive patient infects 2-3 people. So it’s at least twice as contagious as flu
2- how deadly is it? Flu kills 0.1% of people infected. The covid-19 mortality rate is a moving target at this point. Northern Italy reported a mortality rate of 5%. China around 3%, South Korea about 1%. Nonetheless all currently reported numbers are at minimum 10x that of flu
Based on current numbers and spread of the disease, epidemiologists have concluded that 60-70% of the entire world population will have Covid-19 within the year.
So let’s sum this up and keep the numbers on the conservative side, because as I mentioned above, the data is constantly evolving:
If only 50% of the United States gets infected with Covid-19, with a mortality rate of 1%, thats 1.65 million people dead. 1.65 million. Flu has killed approximately 650,000 in the entire world, approximately 33-50k in the United States.
Assuming that Covid-19 is something lesser than it is without all of the data could be, literally, fatal. I wouldn’t take it too lightly. Hopefully in the next few weeks the numbers will look a lot more promising. No need to panic but please be cautious.”
School Nurse Headquarters 