Someone recently asked me if they should handle Amazon packages with gloves, and spray them with Lysol, in case they were shipped from China and contaminated with coronavirus. A friend entered a Chicago doctor’s office with her son who was adopted from South Korea and saw a woman gasp and put her hand over the mouth and nose of the child seated next to her.
False information about new viruses can cause its own kind of outbreak. On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization named the outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a new coronavirus, that was first detected in Wuhan City, China, coronavirus disease 2019---abbreviated “COVID-19”.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that for the general American public the immediate health risk from COVID-19 is low. While most people who contract the disease have mild symptoms, some develop respiratory complications.. In approximately 3% of those cases, this leads to multiple organ failure and death. Dr. Carlos del Rio, a professor of medicine and global health at Emory University notes that it's not just COVID-19 that can bring on multi-organ failure. Just last month, he saw the same thing in a flu patient.
The same precautions we take to prevent getting the flu apply to COVID-19: if you’re sick, cover coughs and sneezes and stay home from work or school. Everyone should practice good handwashing. The survival of viruses on surfaces isn’t great so there’s no need to Lysol that Amazon package. And being of Asian descent obviously doesn’t make you more susceptible to carrying the disease.
Resources:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/summary.html
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/02/14/805289669/how-covid-19-kills-the-new-coronavirus-disease-can-take-a-deadly-turn
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800725861/amid-coronavirus-scare-the-u-s-counts-thousands-of-flu-deaths
