At long last, the President has declared a National state of emergency and the administration has called for the implementation of overdue measures to hinder the spreading of the virus.
What does this mean?
We are facing a virus that provokes the so-called COVID-19, a disease of the respiratory tract that manifests itself with signs of flu, cough and that can degenerate and provoke the death of the patient.
This virus infects at least 5% of the population, with a mortality rate between 1% and 6% (rates of South Korea vs Italy, respectively).
The incubation time, that is the time passing between the infection and the manifestation of the signs of the disease, is about two-three weeks
If the severe measures for stopping the spreading are implemented (and this only depends on us !) we can expect that the number of infections and casualties will keep increasing for two-three weeks, and then it will start leveling off so that the number of infected people will stop growing and the mortality will be reduced to zero, by another two-three weeks
This is what happened in China and in South Korea.
Can we hope that a similar scenario will apply to the US?
Yes, we can “hope” because, without a test available everywhere and without a large number of individuals being tested, we still do not have a clear snapshot of the situation, we do not know how many people are already infected. Therefore it is quite difficult to make predictions about the overall incidence of the disease in the next month or so.
Submitted by Paolo Giacomoni