Every day we get disturbing news about the new virus. Let's address the facts more thoroughly.
Every single day we get a huge amount of disturbing news about the new virus. In conversations, on the Internet, on TV ... A lot of data, however, the information is variable.
But!
Let's address the facts more thoroughly.
Indeed, coronavirus exists. Exists for a very long time already. More and more patients with “cold” and “stomach upset” appear annually. More often we encounter mild manifestations and try to prescribe as few medicines as possible in such cases, resorting to traditional and safe (being at the same time very effective) means: home regimen, more sleep, drinking more warm tea, fruit drinks and water and keeping a diet. As a rule, this all is enough. Hardly anybody has an idea to test the patient for the type of virus that caused the disease. And quite often the cause of infection is coronavirus (however, leading to the infection as often as adenoviruses, parainfluenza viruses and respiratory syncytial viruses).
The situation is much more serious in case of epidemic of real flu, when the vast majority of patients suffer from high fever, severe headaches, muscle aches, complications such as severe otitis media, meningitis, encephalitis and pneumonia (in the last three cases, the patients sometimes die).
This does not scare us! We have got used to it long time ago, and the vaccine exists (for some reason, however, not everyone undergoes vaccination).
Last year, a new type of coronavirus was identified in China, now called COVID-19. For various reasons, information about it began to spread very quickly and it is now difficult to understand what is more dangerous: the coronavirus itself or the fear that haunts and affects a lot of people around the world.
Let's look at the statistics.
Indeed, the virus spread very quickly in China and affected about 80,000 people, which is nevertheless only about 0.005% of the population of the country (with the population of 1,395,380,000 to the end of 2019). At this time the disease has already subsided there. According to WHO observations, the vast majority of patients (81%) with COVID-19 tolerate it either with no symptoms at all, or with minimal or moderate manifestations (acute respiratory viral infections or small bowel disorders); 14% of patients have more serious symptoms, such as fever, cough, and sometimes shortness of breath; in about 5% of cases the situation gets serious and in 2.3% of cases patients do not survive.
Like with other diseases, all patients with severe forms of infection are people suffering from severe chronic diseases or elderly.
The infection practically does not affect children under 9 years old (perhaps they have it in such a light form that no one has an idea to take an analysis).
In conclusion, if you look at statistics and take into account that it does not occur to anyone to publish total statistics on other acute respiratory viral infections several times a day across all media, the question arises: is this virus really terrible?
In parallel, another question arises: how not to get infected?
Everything is simple. Since it is now clear that the most likely ways of transmission of the virus are airborne and fecal-oral, you need the following:
- wash your hands more often, especially if you visit public places (remember, the trolley handle in the supermarket is the most contaminated by microbes),
- try to limit contact with sick people
- try to touch face with hands less (your face and faces of other people).
Interestingly, WHO does not recommend healthy people to use masks, even in the areas with reported cases of coronavirus infection.
Do not forget that stress and panic greatly reduce immunity, whereas good mood and vaccinations increase it!