Part 1 - The Science

As you’ve almost certainly heard by now, we’re in the middle of an exponentially-growing outbreak of a new coronavirus (technically, the virus is called SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes is COVID-19). You’ve likely seen photos like this on social media:

So: What is this virus? Why should we care? I am a science communicator and educator and have been getting lots of questions about the coronavirus recently, so I decided to write up a primer on the topic to send out. This is part one of three, focusing on the science. I’ve written part two on the solutions and part three on spiritual resources for Christians/clergy, which is out now. Feel free to share this around or contact me with questions.

Matthew Groves



Part 1: The Science

Let’s be clear: people buying a years’ worth of toilet paper are panicking. The coronavirus will not end the world. There’s no reason to think that anywhere near a majority of the human race will die, or that we’re facing a post-apocalyptic America like you may have seen in various works of fiction.

However.

This is not just another flu outbreak. It’s worse, and it’s about to get much worse here in the US. Primarily, the mortality rate seems to be settling somewhere in the 3–4% rate overall, in contrast with the flu’s typical rate of less than 0.1%. This makes it at least 20 times as fatal as the flu.

First off, it’s called the “corona-virus” because corona means “crown” in Latin, and the coronavirus has lots of little spikes on its surface. The “virus” part of the name is its category. Viruses aren’t even really properly “alive,” just balls of DNA surrounded by a protein wall that’s held together by fat. That’s why everyone is telling you to wash your hands: soap dissolves the fat, which then breaks up the virus.


Now, it is true that most young, healthy people are unlikely to be in serious danger even if they are infected. However, this isn’t quite as good as it seems. First, if you say things like, “only people who are already sick or old are in danger,” you’re effectively telling sick people and older people that you don’t care about their lives. If you’re young and in good health like I am, you might be surprised by the people in your life who are at great risk. If you think of all the people you care about, and look at the list below, I’m certain there will be some overlap. People who:

  • Are over 60 (and especially over 70, but even those over 50 are at greater risk)

  • Have existing lung diseases

  • Have a separate serious illness, like cancer

  • Have diabetes (like my wife)

  • Have received an organ transplant (like my mom and aunt)

That’s why it’s almost worse that you can contract the disease without it affecting you. Yes, you’ll be fine. But if you’re young and healthy, the danger is not really that you will die. The danger is that you’ll be contagious — without showing symptoms or even knowing you have it — and you’ll infect someone in the group above, whose immune system won’t be able to protect them.

And since America is so, so far behind other countries in our testing, there are almost certainly thousands and thousands more infected people in the US than the official count shows. Because even if we were testing everyone with symptoms, all of the infected people without symptoms would be infecting even more people. If you look at the Chinese region where the outbreak began, we can see that at any point during the growth phase, there were actually ~20 times as many real cases (gray bars added up) as diagnosed cases (yellows bars added up):


Source: Tomas Pueyo analysis over chart and data from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Source: Tomas Pueyo analysis over chart and data from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

This is why the US could easily have over 500,000 people infected right now, even though we have only ~2,500 confirmed cases. And this is why the Ohio state government estimates they have over 100,000 real cases, even though they only have 26 confirmed cases. This means there’s a decent chance you are currently infected and contagious, but don’t even realize it.

All the data from other countries like Italy confirms these fears about widespread unconfirmed cases, since we aren’t any better-prepared than the Italians were:


US v Italy.png

So all indications lead us to believe that we as a country are about a week or two “behind” Italy. This is bad news: the Italians are currently under a government-mandated, nation-wide lockdown to try and prevent the spread (The French and Spanish have just joined them, closing all non-essential stores and organizations).

Worse, these countries’ hospitals are being absolutely pummeled. Italian doctors are currently having to decide which patients deserve live-saving treatment, and their medical groups are giving official recommendations about whose life is not worth saving. This is terrible, and drastic, and it’s where the US will be in a week or two. Seattle, an early hub of the virus here in America, is already beginning to see similar problems in its hospitals. These hospital beds are crucial to save the lives of people with weaker immune systems (not to mention people who have unrelated health crises, like car crashes, strokes, heart attacks, etc.), and they’re about to start filling up. American hospitals were already pretty full, and they’re taking severe measures like calling in doctors out of retirement and cancelling less-critical surgeries to get ready.

Italian doctors are currently having to decide which patients deserve live-saving treatment, and we have every reason to believe the US will be in a similar place in 10–14 days

We also don’t have a vaccine for this coronavirus, and we probably won’t have one until 2021 at the earliest. Even if we suspend animal trials and begin tests immediately on human beings — which not everyone thinks is the right approach, even in the face of a pandemic — we’re still likely to be waiting for a full year or more for this vaccine.

There’s also no reason to believe the virus will fade significantly in the summer, despite what some people have said. We might be tempted to take hope from the fact that Wuhan, the Chinese city where the disease originated, has largely contained the virus and only has a few new cases each day, down from ~3,000 at the peak of the outbreak. However, that’s because they have been in an unprecedentedly strict lockdown since January 22, severely restricting people’s civil liberties in a way that may not be possible in America. So there’s every reason to believe that we’re in this for the long haul.

So, what to do? I’ll write a longer entry called “Part 2: Solutions” soon, but the short answer is:

  • Wash your hands a lot (especially before eating or being in public places) and for at least 20 seconds (there’s plenty of pop songs with choruses that are long enough)

  • Don’t touch your face. I know it’s hard, but that’s a leading way that people catch the disease.

  • Start avoiding unnecessary contact with other people now. This is the time to stop shaking hands at all, try and work from home, and cancel big gatherings and any travel plans. You may have heard this called “social distancing,” where you try to keep at least 6 feet away from others. It’s the best way to slow the spread of the disease and keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed. It’s perhaps best summarized in this clip:


Be back soon,

Matthew

Deeper dives if you want to do some more research:

Matthew GrovesComment