Op-Ed: The pandemic, Hurricane Ian and me — a doctor whose friends say I have PTSD
Published: Tuesday, April 11, 2020
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What has me in a tizzy over all of this is that while it’s true that the disease in the US is COVID-19, when you say “coronavirus” you’re referring to the common cold and the flu. There are at least four different types of coronaviruses floating around. The new one, COVID-19, was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan but has now spread to every continent of the globe.
I’ve been writing about the flu for almost five years. In this time, the virus has never killed anyone directly because it lacks an effective vaccine. In fact, the world community of scientists and health care professionals has developed more effective vaccines for the flu every year.
Every year the flu kills thousands because it spreads so easily and is so difficult to fight.
However, COVID-19 is different. Unlike the flu, it’s still out there and there is no vaccine for the virus. Scientists don’t fully understand all of the virus’s characteristics — how it attacks the body and the way it kills (which is different than the flu, which primarily kills by attacking the lungs).
And I have no idea how it spread to the four million people in the US and how easy it is to spread to another person.
The key point is that in this flu season, I’ve seen flu activity in every state of the country with the exception of one — West Virginia — and the flu is here again.
COVID-19 cases in the US have spiked like a rocket. The flu virus is going to be the same every year; in fact, the flu season is coming early this year.
And one more thing: The coronavirus has killed thousands in China and around the world — and not in the US, where more than 40,000 people have died because of the flu.
A doctor whose