Taking this disease lightly serves no good purpose

It’s times like these that bring out the best and worst in people.

Unlike previous crisis, this one surrounding the spread of novel coronavirus and the disease it carries, COVID-19, has elements of politics mixed in. It also is fueled by the proliferation of social media avenues. Combine those two elements, and good information surrounding the disease is often drowned in a sea of at best misinformation and ignorance and at worse outright lies and deception.

Who benefits from this will be up to history to judge. But there are aspects of this outbreak that can be learned and benefited from right now.

The first is its nature. COVID-19 is not a common cold or similar to it. A common cold is a rhinovirus because it originates in the nose.

COVID-19 is also not the flu because, according to an Eastern Washington University virtual panel discussion on Tuesday, March 17, the virus carries respiratory afflictions the flu does not.

Even presented with these minimal facts, many people continue to try to pass this disease off as an issue not worthy of the intense media coverage it is finally receiving. It’s no big deal because the flu infects more people and kills more people each year than coronavirus — at least so far.

Why should we make such a big deal about it?

“Because it spreads easier, it hides longer and it’s more lethal,” Public Health Program Director Dr. David Line said. “This is a significant issue. Until we have herd immunity, or at least public immunity as a group to the disease, it’s going to rebound and come around and visit us again.”

The disease as of my writing right now has 197,126 confirmed cases and killed 7,905 worldwide. In the U.S., 6,362 cases have been confirmed with 108 deaths, and in Washington, 1,012 cases have been confirmed with 52 deaths.

Think back just a couple days. These numbers were significantly less late last week when schools were closed, gathering sizes were limited and some businesses shutdown to reduce contact. Look back further and Cheney Care Center executive director Keith Fauerso is right, we are about 45-50 days behind where the Chinese were at this point in outbreak in their country, resulting in the shutdown and complete quarantine of a city and province.

It’s hard when our daily lives are upended. Some people panic, and the empty shelves on a lot of grocery outlets is proof of this.

Others see opportunity, and likely some of those buying up cases and cases of toilet paper, hand sanitizer and other needed products are seeing dollar signs with their ability to make money in an environment of short supply. That’s part of the worst in us.

Other people trivialize the impacts of this disease with proclamations like “It only really impacts old people” or those with compromised immune systems. But those are still people.

Instead of looking at death numbers as cold statistics, look at them as someone’s grandma, or grandpa, brother, sister, mother, father, cousin or friend. How would you feel if someone like that in your life was no more?

In statements at the end of EWU’s panel, undergraduate public health program director Dr. Sarah Mount noted that public health is not personnel health. Public health is about the public at large, and practicing good public health is about protecting our community.

I would hope people would see this eventually and soon. It does no good to play into someone else’s agenda by downplaying the seriousness of this disease to people and our society.

Nor does it do any good to whine about impositions and changes to our daily lives. Some will counter that statement by pointing to people whose economic livelihood will be impacted by the shutdown in business, and to that I say “I know.”

My family has already experienced significant financial pain through lost employment, but we’ll get by. For those in similar circumstances but without resources to fall back on, there is help out there and more coming.

We can speed that along by taking this seriously, and finding ways to help out instead of ways to dismiss what’s going on. If we do, we will get through this successfully.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.