What Makes This Latest Coronavirus as Newsworthy as the Influenza Virus?

February 8, 2020 – My heart goes out to those who have been impacted by the coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, which was first reported in Wuhan, China on December 31, 2019. Since then the number of infected and dead have dramatically grown. The official attempt by the People’s Republic of China to suppress news of the outbreak has contributed to the large numbers of people infected in Wuhan and neighbouring Hobei Province. China’s offical line was to keep a lid on the news before finally admitting Pandora’s Box had indeed been opened and the disease had broken containment.This does not speak kindly of China’s authoritarian regime and its general disregard for the welfare of ordinary citizens.

As of the time of this writing, the numbers keep changing but this is a reasonable snapshot:

• Cases: 34,958 with 34,611 in China, and 347 in the rest of the world, slightly less than 1%.
• Severe cases: 6,106 with 6,101 in China and 5 in the rest of the world, or 0.08%.
• Deaths: 725 with 722 in China, 1 in Hong Kong, 1 in The Philippines, and the latest, 1 in the United States, or 0.4% for the latter three.
• Recovered: 2,397 of which 2,363 are in China, and 14 in the rest of the world.
• In the last two days, China reports 3,450 new cases, almost ten times the number of cases in total for the rest of the planet.
• In the last two days, the rest of the world has reported 69 new cases, 2% of the total occurring in China.

The countries neighbouring China have seen the largest number of cases outside that country with Japan the hardest hit at 89 cases of which 44 reported in the last two days. No one in Japan has died.

Other countries in the double digits include Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia, Germany, Vietnam, the United States, France, and Macao.

In total, 28 countries are reporting cases of 2019-nCoV. There is no doubt the single point of origin is Wuhan, Hubei Province. The World Health Organization (WHO) has called the outbreak a global emergency but not labeled it a pandemic. Some in the media are choosing to use pandemic to describe the disease.

Tourists on cruise ships where the virus is suspect have been put in lockdown for up to 14 days, to ensure that exposure to the disease is contained onboard. Airplanes ferrying foreign nationals who were in Hubei Province at the time of the outbreak or visited, after it was first reported, have been put in quarantine back in their home countries.

Russia closed its border with China. Other countries are refusing entry to people coming from China.

There is no doubt that 2019-nCoV is a serious viral pathogen. But hardly a worldwide pandemic. It is almost exclusively happening within China, and largely within a single city in one province. But the panic around this latest coronavirus strain has business writers talking about its global impact on GDP, car manufacturers closing production lines that are not even China-based, and the media plastering the daily crisis on the front pages of newspapers.

Now compare this to a virus that is indeed a global pandemic. The WHO considers seasonal influenza, the flu, to be an annual global pandemic. There are four strains of the virus and sub-strains, A, B, C, and D. Influenza A is considered the pandemic-version of the flu while B, C, and D are considered less so.

The typical flu infection takes 2 to 4 days to incubate and runs a course that lasts two weeks. The disease can lead to acute respiratory complications leading to hospitalizations and death particularly in high-risk groups, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with other chronic and debilitating diseases. Healthcare workers are highly susceptible to contracting the flu because the disease is highly communicable.

Worldwide, flu produces 3 to 5 million severe cases and between 290 000 and  650 000 respiratory deaths annually. It is the elderly that are most impacted in the Developed World. But in the Developing World, the majority of deaths occur in children under the age of 5.

It is referred to as a seasonal disease largely because in temperate climates it tends to happen in the late fall and winter. But in the tropics, it can occur year-round.

The flu is easily transmitted through the air by coughs and sneezes. Anyone within one meter (3.3 feet) of an infected person is susceptible.  When infected, wearing a mask, and using a tissue to cover your nose and mouth when coughing and sneezing can limit the spread. And so can regular handwashing.

So it sounds like the newspapers should be putting seasonal influenza on the front pages of dailies with the latest body counts. But they don’t because flu has been around for a very long time, whereas the coronavirus strain, 2019-nCoV, is a mere six weeks old.

Far more concerning to me about the real pandemic that is influenza, is the fact that it can be prevented. Vaccines are prepared every year for the last 60 years to help us prevent the flu. And because the influenza virus strains rapidly evolve from year to year, annual vaccines are developed to combat these new versions of the pathogen. Yet in the United States and Canada between one-third and just under 50% of the population gets vaccinated every year. And what’s even more astonishing about the Canadian statistic, is that the influenza vaccine is offered free.

You can be assured that 2019-nCoV will eventually go the way of past coronavirus infections that suddenly emerged causing serious infections and death before evolving to become more benign to human hosts. Yes, thousands will die and then the killing nature of the virus will diminish. After all, a virus cannot continue to live if it kills all of its hosts.

Meanwhile, we will still have influenza, the real global pandemic for which we have a controlling cure, the annual effort made by the medical community to develop vaccines to combat flu’s ever-evolving strains. Maybe we need a similar dedication by the media to educate all of us about why getting vaccinated is so important. And maybe the media can then provide an annual report card to the public on how we collectively are doing to rid the world of influenza strains that will kill as many as 650,000 of us this year compared to the 725 who have so far succumbed to 2019-nCoV.