I’ve been holding off making any sort of real posts about the Wuhan flu, but it might be time for me to share some thoughts. Please understand, these are merely my own opinions based on reading the thoughts of others as well as gathering what information I can find that at least stands a chance of being reliable.
I’m not a doctor, nor a medical professional of any type. I don’t have any sort of “secret source” and I’m not here trying to sell you anything. As I’ve been saying for years now, I’m just a dude, though perhaps a dude who spends more time than most thinking about these sorts of things.
Here’s what I think should concern us.
1) The virus has a long incubation period. I’m hearing anywhere from 12-14 days. It isn’t clear exactly where along there the person becomes contagious.
2) The virus reportedly has a relatively high R0 factor. This refers to the contagious capability, or how many people the average person will infect once they become contagious. The “normal” flu has an R0 of a little more than 1, meaning if you get the flu, you’re likely to infect maybe one other person. The Wuhan flu is said to have an R0 of somewhere between 2-4. This means it could spread quickly without precautionary measures being taken.
3) The mortality rate is kind of scary right now. The normal flu runs about 0.01% of the infected dying from the disease. The Wuhan flu is around 3%. To put that into perspective, roughly 20 million people in the United States got sick with the flu from October 2019 to now. If the death rate for the Wuhan virus were applied, that means over 600K of them would have died. What isn’t clear, at least to me, is what percentage of the Wuhan flu deaths are individuals who were otherwise healthy. Some reports indicate that the deaths are mostly people whose health was already compromised, due to age or other factors.
4) Parts of China are reportedly essentially shutdown due to the virus. As most of you already know, we import an awful lot of goods from China and we are probably going to see some shortages with some of those items in the near future. Not right away, not tomorrow, but relatively soon. The impact this illness is going to have on the global economy remains to be seen. We’re still in the early days as far as that goes.
5) We don’t know what we don’t know. Meaning, China doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation for sharing information. We’re seeing a huge number of “leaked” videos and social media posts, but it is impossible to verify the information right now. What we are seeing, IF TRUE, is horrible (dead bodies everywhere, people collapsing, citizens being pulled from homes).
Wuhan pandemic
Do I personally think we’re facing a global pandemic on the scale of the Spanish Flu? Hard to say. That pandemic infected 500 million people and killed up to 50 million of them. Our medical protocols are a bit more advanced than they were 100 years ago, so we have that going for us. That said, caution is advised. Use common sense and avoid panicking about this whole situation.
And WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS!
About the author
Jim Cobb is a well known freelance author on survival and other topics.
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During the swine flu crisis, a medical group (don’t remember the name) put out a statement, but it didn’t get much play. They said, the flu, ANY flu, incubates in the back of your throat for 2-3 days, gargling with warm saltwater or Listerine could reduce the chances of getting the flu by 80+%. By chance, for totally different reasons, I started gargling and brushing my teeth with Listerine 20+ years ago. I have not had the flue, or a cold in all that time (and, no, I do not get a flu shot. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, only that I don’t).
Thanks for the comment, Bruce. The gargling with salt water was one of my Mom’s favorites, actually. From the pathophysiology perspective … quite plausible that it would help reduce the ability of a virus to move between cells (which it must do to grow an infection) for those viruses that infect those throat cells. However, it’s not true that all viruses have that behavior. Many of the common upper respiratory infection viruses do, but it’s by no means universal.
My latest concern is that this virus may be able to attach to particulate matter aka pollution in the atmosphere and travel great distances. Given the heavy pollution aka “smog” in and around most Chinese cities…it is not hard to imagine this happening. If carried aloft by wind currents, they could go to great altitudes and be transported by the jet stream. If that were to happen, no amount of security measures like screening plane passengers and/or quarantines will be able to keep the virus outside US borders.