I'm still not sure I understand the hysteria over all this. Normal flu has potentially contributed to killing hundreds of thousands of people each year, but that's not on the news every day.
That's the most reasonable opinion in the room, I agree. It's the fear of the unknown that's driving all the hysteria. At this stage, we don't fully understand how COVID-19 is spread, and it seems to spread much more easily than similar viruses:
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The new virus spreads much more readily than the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS (also a coronavirus), and has infected more than ten times the number of people who contracted SARS.
Genomic analyses of the new coronavirus have revealed that its spike protein differs from those of close relatives, and suggest that the protein has a site on it which is activated by a host-cell enzyme called furin.
This is significant because furin is found in lots of human tissues, including the lungs, liver and small intestines, which means that the virus has the potential to attack multiple organs, says Li Hua, a structural biologist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.
Genomic analyses of the new coronavirus have revealed that its spike protein differs from those of close relatives, and suggest that the protein has a site on it which is activated by a host-cell enzyme called furin.
This is significant because furin is found in lots of human tissues, including the lungs, liver and small intestines, which means that the virus has the potential to attack multiple organs, says Li Hua, a structural biologist at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.
People are also fearful since it could take more than a year to develop a vaccine.
