Coronavirus Outbreak: Facts Help Fight Panic

A false sense of calm is recipe for chaos

When CDC officials declared that spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is inevitable I actually sighed in relief. To conquer pandemics we need data, preparation, and not rosy reassurances.

That spread is inevitable became clear when the nature of transmission started to emerge. Let me explain: In some diseases people are contagious only when they’re sick. In that case, halting the spread by isolating people with symptoms is challenging but theoretically possible.

But in diseases in which people are contagious without exhibiting any symptoms, eliminating the spread is virtually impossible once the genie’s out of the bottle. The most ‘successful’ viruses are those that don’t make their hosts too sick, and are subclinical, mildly symptomatic, or even asymptomatic in some infected people.

Infection can spread silently.

And that’s quite likely the case with COVID-19. It started in China in 2019 and has already spread to many countries. We now know that people can harbor the virus for 14 days (maybe even more) before they show any symptoms, and can be contagious during that time. There’s now a first report of a 20 year old spreading the virus and never developing the illness at all.