- De Novo Coronavirus has a new name,
and there's a ton of new misinformation out there.
We're gonna stay alert and not anxious,
on this week's Wednesday check out.
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The day Today is February 18th 2020.
I need you to know that
because all the information I'm about to give you
is relevant up until this date.
Things change really quickly,
especially when it comes to new viruses like this.
Let's kick it off by talking about the new name
of the De Novo coronavirus, COVID-19.
CO from Corona, VI from virus, D for disease
19 'cause it actually started in December 2019.
Actually was a World Health Organization
that decided to give the De Novo Coronavirus
the COVID-19 title and they worked really hard on this
because they wanted to avoid
a few really important setbacks.
Number one, they didn't wanna include the location
'cause it comes with a lot of stereotyping.
People we're calling this the Chinese Coronavirus,
the Wuhan Coronavirus, that's now what we're calling it.
They wanted to avoid implicating any animal in this
because as we've seen with the H1N1 virus,
people started referring to as swine flu,
other ones as the bird flu.
This has nothing to do with animals.
Yes, it started in an animal vector,
but now it's within humans,
there's no need to get animals involved.
The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses
started saying that maybe we should call it SARS-COV-2
but the WHO was like "No don't.
"Even though it's somewhat related to SARS,
"don't put SARS in the title,
"that's only gonna scare people", and I agree with them.
COVID-19, that's where I stand
I think that's the best title for it.
Now let's get to the updated numbers.
Currently, we have 73,000 cases of COVID-19
with 1.9 thousand deaths as a result of this virus.
Now that being said, there was a huge spike in the numbers
of those who were infected as well as deaths
last week on Thursday.
A lot of people started to panic.
They started to think that the virus was worsening,
and it's in intensity and it's spread.
And that was not happening.
What changed and why this number went up so drastically
from one day to the next,
was because in the center of where all this is happening,
the Hubei province where Wuhan China is located,
they change their way of identifying who has the virus.
They were simply running low on testing kits.
So they decided to do something smart,
those who showed clinical symptoms of COVID-19
and were exposed to COVID-19, were diagnosed with it.
That's pretty much what I do in my office with the flu.
That's called a clinical diagnosis.
If you see someone with a cough, shortness of breath,
fever and exposure to the COVID-19 virus, they have it.
You don't need to do a kit in that area.
This doesn't apply to the rest of the world.,
but in Hubei Province, it makes a lot of sense.
So yes, we saw the number drastically go up.
But there was no need to panic
'cause we had an explanation why.
In fact, the New York Times just put out a great article
explaining of why we're looking at these numbers all wrong.
We should not be looking at these numbers
hour by hour, day by day.
In fact, there's websites that are dedicated
to tracking this and showing you
where new cases are popping up.
It's almost like they're gamifying the system.
We don't need to do that.
There's gonna be spikes in how we count,
there's gonna be mistakes in how we count.
There's a reason why I'm giving these updated numbers
about every week or two.
Because otherwise it gets too confusing to track.
If the WHO or CDC needs us to be alerted of something
they'll let us know.
Otherwise, let those other websites panic,
you stay alert, not anxious.
There's been a lot of talk
about that lethality or death rate
when it comes to the COVID-19 virus.
Let's talk about what that means.
When someone becomes ill with any virus,
there's a specific rate of those who have a mild illness,
moderate to severe or critical one leading to death.
When we look at the numbers currently
for this COVID-19 virus, what we see is that 81%,
which is by far the huge majority, are mild cases.
14% are moderate to severe, meaning that
the patient will get a bacterial infection on top of it,
and pneumonia so on, and then 5% are critical cases
where those people need respiratory support
or even lead to death.
What does all of that mean?
In order to understand the impact
that a virus has on a community
we look at a couple of measures.
We look at how infective a virus is
meaning how likely is it to spread within the community,
as well as its lethality rate.
Now one of the most deadly infections out there is Ebola.
It has a 50%, about a 50%,
'cause we've seen variations in this, 50% death rate.
Then MERS, which is the outbreak that happened in 2012, 30%.
SARS 10%.
For this virus we're seeing around 2% fatality rate.
And I wouldn't be surprised if that number goes down
as we find more mild cases that we haven't diagnosed yet.
Also, to put in perspective,
the traditional influenza virus that we see here in the US,
the seasonal flu is point one to .2% lethality rate.
You've probably also heard on the news
that there's been several cruise ships
that have been quarantined to prevent the spread
of the COVID-19 virus because someone on board
was found to be sick.
This is truly happening, there's actually some Americans
that were found on some of these cruise ships
and were brought back to the United States
and held in quarantine.
I think this is a great opportunity
to talk about the difference
between isolation and quarantine.
Isolation is what we do in a medical facility,
but you could do it technically anywhere
with someone who's already sick.
Quarantine is what you do with someone
who's either sick, or you're not sure if they're sick
and you prevent them from exposing
themselves to other people.
You can do a quarantine in a cruise ship,
in someone's home, in an army base,
as long as they're preventing spread
of anything that they might have,
that's considered a quarantine.
Here's five new updates on the COVID-19 virus
that I think you should know.
Number one, packages.
There's many people that have a fear and rightfully so,
of opening packages that have come from China
and they worried that they may be infected
with the COVID-19 virus.
In looking at the testimony from experts
from the NIH, CDC, WHO, it looks like
our suspicion at the moment,
is that the virus only survives on surfaces for a few hours,
much like the SARS and MERS viruses did as well.
They are close cousins of COVID-19.
That being said, if you're handling any packages from China,
you should be washing your hands right afterwards,
just to be safe.
The CDC did go on record and state
that the primary spread of the COVID-19 virus
is not through surface contamination,
it's through respiratory droplets.
So they seem to agree with the experts as well,
that's good to know.
Two, let's talk treatments,
since this is a virus and we currently have no treatments
other than supportive care, like giving people fluids,
making sure that they have respiratory support
or if they get a bacterial infection on top
we can give antibiotics.
Right now they are 80 trials trying to figure out
which antiviral or antiretroviral therapies
would work on COVID-19.
In fact, there's a new study that just kicked off in Japan,
using HIV medications on the virus to see if that works.
Look, the huge majority of these are gonna fail,
but if we find promise, even in some of these,
that's gonna make a big difference in the long run.
Three, vaccines.
Since you know, I'm a big fan of vaccines,
and you should be as well, especially the flu vaccine,
WHO recently went on record and said
the COVID-19 vaccine is in the works
and can potentially be completed 18 months from now.
I know that sounds like a long ways away,
but if the situation is to continue to worsen,
it's good to know that we have hope
from a vaccine on the horizon.
In fact, we have some vaccines available now,
but they're just going into the beginning trials now
we wanna make sure they're safe.
So we do do tests on vaccines to make sure they're safe
before we give them to the general public.
Four, there is a ton of misinformation
spreading across the web,
about the origins of the COVID-19 virus.
There's even US senators,
they're trying to say that there's a potential
for bio-terrorism here.
There is no evidence of this.
And all that is doing is creating more panic
and fear mongering.
We should only take evidence that we have now
and use that to guide our further research.
Do not put wild unsubstantiated conspiracy theories
out there, 'cause it just confuses us
and really gives more ammunition to trolls on social media
to create grabbing headlines and visuals
to really misguide the general public.
The current prevailing theory
is still the one from my first video
that this virus began in animals
and jumped to a human source.
Whether that happened in the Wuhan market,
whether it happened in a Wuhan lab,
it doesn't even matter if it was a bat, a pangolin,
it doesn't matter which animal we're talking about.
That's still the prevailing theory and until it's disproved,
there's no need to start thinking conspiracy theories.
Five, don't believe in self treatment.
If you think that you may have the COVID-19 virus,
contact a health professional immediately.
The WHO just released a mega warning about this.
There's things popping up on Instagram
about vitamin C mega doses, herbal preparations,
even smoking as a recommendation for this.
There is no proof that any of this works
and in fact it can put your life further in danger.
Please contact the health professional
if you think you may have been exposed to this
and are experiencing symptoms.
And also I want to note
that there's becoming a shortage of masks
both regular surgical masks and specialized N95 masks,
'cause it seems like everyone is ordering them.
Leave the equipment to professionals,
people who truly need it.
In fact, there's been 1700 medical workers
who have been infected by the COVID-19 virus,
they're already facing significant risk
do not make the problem worse
by having them treat patients without proper protection.
Don't buy masks for yourself if you don't need them.
And the CDC has been firm on this.
Most people, ones that are healthy and not sick
do not need a mask at this time.
We're gonna keep the hashtag #ALERTNOTANXIOUS
going for this video.
And if you wanna know the truth about allergies
and food sensitivity tests
because that involves your immune system as well
click here for that video.
I sat down with a world renowned allergist,
and did an interview.
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