Oh, it’s just a flu.
It’s okay, I’ll survive this.
I am young and healthy, not a big scare even if I get it.
I am sure you must have heard people saying these things, amid the coronavirus outbreak. And while there is some truth to the statements, the problem we are facing is much bigger.
Elaborating on this, intensive care specialist Professor Hugh Montgomery, explains how the coronavirus affects people.
He explains:
Normal flu, if I get that, I am going to infect 1.3-1.4 people, if there could be such a division. By the time it happens 10 times, I will have infected 14 people. Coronavirus, every person passes it on to 3. If those 3 people pass it on to another 3, and it happens in 10 layers, I will have infected 59,000 people.
He further said that it takes around 10 days for a person to fully realise that they are infected, and by that time, it’s too late.
When asked about whether it’s the end of the world, he said that he doesn’t want to downplay things, but no.
It’s going to be ugly, it’s going to be horrible…but it will be a small number of people who get properly sick and a smaller percentage of those need to come to an ICU, and we can save the lives of a large number of those people too.