Currently the world is in a state of panic and distress as we are attempting to combat the global pandemic of COVID-19. As of the day im writing there are about 265,500 cases worldwide and a death toll of 11,113. This means the death rate is about 4.12%. This information may not come as a shock to many, because of the efforts under effect right now, such as: the shutdown of all sporting events, nationwide school cancellation, and the enforcement of social distancing.
Right now Italy is in deep. They are currently the country with the most COVID-19 deaths, greatly surpassing China’s 3,100 deaths, with numbers of over 4,000 deaths. But, what’s more alarming than the death toll, which makes up almost 40% of the total death count, is that they have significantly less total cases than China. So, why is the virus affecting Italy in such way? Well, the short answer lies in the economy. No matter how many laws you put in place that stresses social distancing and hygiene if a country can’t financially support the wave of patients, then the obvious result is deaths that could have been prevented.
But the virus is also devastating the homeland.
The corona virus’ curve is exponential, which makes it nearly impossible to completely reverse back to 0 in a short time frame, so the main goal right now is to “flatten the curve”. Infectious disease expert, Dr. Dennis Carroll said in an ABC news interview, “The speed at which this virus is spreading across America that if we let it continue to infect at the direction it is now, using the limited interventions we have now within 3-4 weeks our health system is going to completely collapse. It’ll be overwhelmed by the number of people seeking urgent care. Flattening the curve is basically what can we do to profoundly impact on the number of people that are being exposed and infected and if we don’t really take the kind of actions that are being now undertaken in California and elsewhere that we are in a really a historic position of facing a health crisis that we’ve never faced before so flattening the curve is basically how can we reduce the number of people exposed today so that three weeks from now the numbers of people showing up at the health facility are fewer than those that were showing up the day before.”
Seeing the graph above we are well in the same direction Italy has gone, and without major precautions being done, we will pass a threshold that our health system can not comprehend, a threshold that has already been reached in Italy. But, it seems like South Korea has managed to flatten the curve, as seen in the graph.
The virus has impacted almost every country by now, and each government has tackled the pandemic in similar ways, but at different levels. South Korea, the country that has flattened the curve the most since the start of the pandemic, implemented mass drive-thru testing centers with the means of testing a max capacity of 20,000 tests, daily. The CDC has reported that 25,000 test have been conducted, as an entire nation. I’ve always believed in the power of testing. Because the virus takes days, and sometimes weeks to show symptoms, due to a longer incubation period. This makes it a necessity to test first, then isolate, because you may very well be in quarantine with an infected person, but you yourself may be healthy. Also, confusion tends to spread without mass testing. You may have the symptoms of the virus, but you haven’t been tested, so in your mind you presume you are healthy, which affects how much precautions you to take in order to not infect others.
https://time.com/5804899/u-s-coronavirus-needs-follow-s-korea/
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Science Now 