Wht Panic?

When you watch certain movies or TV shows it depicts an unknown virus that decimates the human population or even worse turns them into zombies.

We have become aware of this danger and tend to believe it is a likely scenario.

Now there have been horrible plagues in our past some of which decimated large swaths of the population.  Obviously there could be a pathogen as dangerous or even more dangerous develop.

Of course we have come to understand the causes and have a much better idea of the causes of infection and how to avoid them.

Still we as humans have a tendency to overreact and to some extent panic.

The latest example is the coronavirus which has nothing to do with the beer.

It is essentially a virus that results in flu like symptoms and an unknown death rate.

When I say unknow, the estimates are somewhere between 2 and 3% but clearly until we have better testing we only can calculate a rate based on known cases.  Since its likely many cases were undiagnosed because the symptoms were mild or people self treated assuming a cold or flu it is almost certainly lower.

It could actually be similar to flu rates, but there simply isn't enough data.

We don't panic over the flu even though it kills 10s of thousands of people every year.  Yes we have a vaccine which helps somewhat, but even so flu is just something we accept.

Coronavirus isn't the end of the world as we know it, its just a new virus that joins a long list of viruses that can infect us.

Common sense, good hygiene and safe practices are the best we can do until a vaccine becomes available.