New coronavirus may be no more dangerous than the flu despite worldwide alarm: experts
Tom Blackwell, National Post, Feb. 3, 2020
The apparently high initial mortality rates have shrunk as the number of infections grows, and many of the infected appear to have mild or no symptoms.
If one thing has spread faster than the new coronavirus from Wuhan, China, it is worldwide fear of the novel bug.
Surgical masks are being hoarded in Toronto, borders closed in Russia and conspiracy theories disseminated far and wide on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the massive quarantines imposed in China are starting to threaten the global economy.
But as evidence of the severity and transmissabilty of 2019-nCoV trickles in, infectious-disease experts say it’s appearing less menacing than first thought, maybe more like seasonal flu than, say, SARS.
The apparently high mortality rates that dominated headlines initially have shrunk as the number of infections grows, and many of the infected appear to have mild or no symptoms.
To some scientists, the situation is reminiscent of the H1N1 pandemic flu of 2009, which burst onto the scene with a frightening spate of deaths in Mexico, only to be viewed as relatively innocuous by the time it petered out for the season.
“Upfront, what you tend to see is probably an over-representation of severe cases that are getting reported,” said Jason Kindrachuk, Canada Research Chair in emerging viruses at the University of Manitoba.
The people who bring a new infection to the fore are those ill enough to seek medical help and get tested, he noted.
“But there are probably a ton of cases in the background that people just thought were mild cases of flu.”
Kindrachuk and other scientists stress that the jury is still out on the new coronavirus, and say that even if it turns out to be a relatively mild disease, health authorities are right to take it very seriously.
But the sense that the media, public and some nations have over-reacted is beginning to seep into conversation.
The current global panic in reaction to the emergence of a fairly mild new virus is wholly unjustified.
Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman complained Monday about the U.S. decision to ban anyone who had been in China recently, accusing it of spreading fear while not actually helping the country most affected by the virus.
In a news release Sunday, the Federation of International Employers urged more calm to avoid economic dislocation and a world recession.
“The current global panic in reaction to the emergence of a fairly mild new virus is wholly unjustified and amounts to mass hysteria,” complained the human resources association, chaired by a Ford Motors executive.
As of Monday, the World Health Organization reported 17,391 laboratory-confirmed cases of the new coronavirus worldwide — the vast majority in China — and 362 deaths.
That’s a death rate of two per cent, several times that of the seasonal flu in places like Canada, and much less than two other recently emerging coronaviruses: SARS (10 per cent); and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS (35 per cent).
But a recent article by University of Hong scientists published by the journal Lancet suggested the actual number of people infected is far higher. Their paper analyzed travel patterns in China and known cases of the virus and used mathematical formula to estimate that more like 75,000 people had contracted the bug there as of Jan. 28.
A child Manila, Philippines, wears a facemask amid public fear over the Wuhan coronavirus, Feb. 3, 2020
That certainly would back up evidence that it spreads faster than SARS or MERS. But based on the number of reported deaths when the paper was published Friday, it would actually produce a mortality rate of just .2 per cent — akin to that of influenzas.
“We don’t freak out about seasonal flu, we experience it every year,” said Matthew Miller, a microbiologist who studies viruses at McMaster University. “The people most likely to die from seasonal flu are the elderly and the very young … The same is very likely to be true with this new coronavirus outbreak. The people who are at highest risk are the people at the highest risk for any type of infection.”
Canada has recorded four cases of the new pathogen, all individuals who had travelled recently to Wuhan.
Of course, even seasonal flu takes a heavy toll, and the Wuhan coronavirus is dispersing among a human population never exposed to it before, meaning people have no immunity.
“If we were not to take any kind of precautions … most of us would end up infected by it,” said Darryl Falzarano, a microbiologist at the University of Saskatchewan who is working on a vaccine for 2019-nCoV. “Are you OK with one in a hundred or one in a thousand people not surviving?”
The goal is to contain the new virus, to essentially snuff it out. But what if that were not possible and it became a regular part of the pool of human infectious disease?
The pathogen would not actually replace seasonal flus, but might not add much to the total amount of respiratory illness, said Miller. The body’s immune system produces both specific and general responses to a virus. That general immune response provides some latent, short-term protection against contracting another bug, he said.
And the number of deaths would likely end up similar to the respiratory-virus toll now, the same vulnerable parts of the population falling victim to either the flu or the novel coronavirus, suggested Miller.
But if the Wuhan coronavirus is not quite as frightening as first depicted, experts say a unique 21st-Century phenomenon – social media and the spread of false news – is making it harder to accurately inform the public.
“It’s the first time I’ve been involved in something like this where there seems to be so much active disinformation spread,” said Falzarano. “Things coming out that are just nonsense, and then are picked up by the media.”