Dear Reader:

A summary from my previous thread on the topic, titled “Coronavirus”:

The first case of the current pandemic infection is believed to have taken place November 17, 2019 in China. On January 30, 2020, WHO (World Health Organization) designated the outbreak at the time a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”. On March 11, 2020, WHO declared it a pandemic.

SARS stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. It is a viral respiratory disease caused by coronaviruses (SARS-Cov) and it spreads from one person to the next in the same ways that the flu does. The current is the second SARS outbreak.

The first SARS outbreak started in China in November 2002, and ended in July 2003 (WHO declared it contained July 5, 2003, but 4 SARS cases were reported in China between Dec 2003 and Jan 2004).  It spread in 17 countries,  involved 8,098 cases, resulting in 774 death (9.6 fatality rate), with the majority of cases in mainland China and Hong Kong.

In comparison, the second SARS outbreak (the current) started in China, spread into about 200 countries, and (according to worldometers.info/coronavirus, today) , the number of cases is 585,000 (and growing), resulting in 26,827 deaths so far (17% mortality rate), with the majority of cases currently in the USA, Italy, China and Spain, in this order.

The current SARS pandemic, involves so far 72 times the number of cases, and 35 times the number of deaths (mortality rate almost double) than the SARS outbreak of Nov 2002-July 2003.

The CDC (Center for Disease Control, USA) and Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory identified the SARS genome in April 2003, during the first SARS outbreak.

MERS, stands for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome was another outbreak of a respiratory infection caused by coronaviruses (MERS-Cov). The first identified case occurred in 2012 in Saudi Arabia and most cases occurred in the Arabian Peninsula. There was a further outbreak of MERS in 2015 in South Korea and another in 2018. There were just under 2,000 cases total as of April 2017 (36% fatality rate). In May 2019, only 14 cases were reported to WHO by Saudi authorities.

Influenza is not caused by the coronaviruses but by a variety of Influenza viruses. It spreads around the world in yearly outbreaks, resulting, according to WHO,  “in about 3-5 million cases of severe illness and about 290,000- 65,000 deaths” every year. About 20% of unvaccinated children and 10% of unvaccinated adults are infected each year. Death occurs mostly in high risk groups- the young, the old, and those with other health problems.

Notice the following: www. cdc. gov/flu: “CDC estimates that, from October 1, 2019, through March 7, 2020, there have been: 36,000,000-51,000,000 flu illnesses, 17,000,000-24,000,000 flu medical visits, 370,000-670,000 flu hospitalizations, 22,000-55,000 flu death”-

– this means that in the USA alone, in five months, here were 36-51 million cases of the flu, which is (at 50 millions) 100 times the number of current COVID-19 total cases in the world. But the flu involves a way lesser mortality rate (22,00-55,000 flu deaths compared to current 26,827 COVID-19 deaths).

I am going to stop here, need a break (this is stressful!)

anita