
Yesterday, the Imperial College released its report on COVID-19. The report reveals massive, frightening predictions – underscoring the importance of the actions we are taking to prevent the anticpiated spread of this new virus. I’ve been spending the last few days going back to my public health roots and digging deep into the novel coronavirus. And I felt compelled to share the points I found salient from the above mentioned report and otherwise. Compelled enough to write my first blog post in…years? Anyway… COVID-19 is not the flu. It is most closely related to SARS. The mortality rate is lower than SARS but it spreads significantly faster. This is why there is such a strong worry that the public will not take it seriously enough. Other names for COVID-19 that you might see: novel coronavirus, coronavirus 2, SARS-CoV-2, HCoV-19. If we treat it like the flu, or go about business as usual: 80% of Americans would get the disease and an estimated 4 million will die. In a span of 3 months. We [the world] have failed at containment so we have two options: mitigation and suppression. Mitigation = isolating all symptomatic cases in the US, quarantining families of those cases, and social distancing for those over 70. Suppression = isolating symptomatic cases and quarantining their family members, social distancing for the whole population plus preventing all public gatherings which includes shutting down the majority of workplaces, bars and dine-in restaurants, closing schools and universities. Mitigation is not enough. We…