In the last couple of months, the press has been filled with news about Coronavirus. Since it appeared in China in December, more than 2000 people have dead due to it. However, flu should not be less important. Remember the Spanish flu (1918), which wiped out 50 million people around the world in the time span of just two. In fact, Influenza, the virus behind the flu, is cause more deaths annually than Coronavirus [1]. So, why this alarm?

  The main reason is its ability to spread itself (higher than other viruses of its family: SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV). It can infect a lot of people in a short time. Furthermore, the incubation period is 6 - 14 days, [2], therefore an infected subject can spread the virus before noting any symptom for a quite long period. Closing borders in China and controlling its population is crucial to avoid an increase in the number of cases outside there.

References

1. UN Health Agency. “Respiratory diseases linked to seasonal flu claim thousands of lives every year – UN health agency | UN News”. UN News (2017).
2. Backer JA., et al. “Incubation period of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infections among travellers from Wuhan, China”. Eurosurveillance 25 (2012): 20-28.
3. Ralph R., et al. “2019-nCoV (Wuhan virus), a novel Coronavirus: Human-to-human transmission, travel-related cases, and vaccine readiness”. The Journal of Infection in Developing 14 (2020): 3-17.
4. Huang C., et al. “Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China”. Lancet (2020): 497-506. 
5. Coronavirus Spurs China to Suspend Tours Abroad and Xi to Warn of a ‘Grave Situation’ - The New York Times (2020).
6. Spain Disputes Tech Show Was Canceled Due to Virus Fears Time (2020).

Citation

Citation: Pablo Jiménez Barrios. “Why are We Not Afraid of the Flu, But Coronavirus?". Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.4 (2020): 60.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Pablo Jiménez Barrios. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.