Does this virus feel different?

[ElderAve]

I'm usually very relaxed about these things and accept the best way to control them is through proper hand hygiene, they're not really a risk to people without underlying health issues etc. Move one and get on with life.

We've had a couple of other hyped viruses in the last decade or so that have causes a lot of deaths in China and elsewhere but not had the feared impact in Europe.

However, people being held for weeks on cruise ships, Serie A games cancelled, Carnival closed, whole cities quarantined. Surely this is unprecedented? What do "they" know that makes this one different?

That no one has any immunity to it because its new/novel. That means for every infected person 2/3 more could be infected with an end result of 60% of the worlds population being infected.

Given quite a few end up being critical and a 2% death rate you can see the issue.

Of course Quartz, but that's no different to Swine Flu and Bird Flu we've had in recent years and government is still saying there's no real cause for concern, whilst taking unprecedented measures.

We havent had bird flu that thank god yet has been able to do human to human transmission. And that is just it we havent had anything hyped really for years and years.

Swine flu had a 10-20% of the population and it turned out was similar enough to previous flus that people had antibodies to it

We just dont have them with this - it is very new. Look at the Diamond Princess how quickly it spreads. And you can have it for a week and be fine and then go criticial. Infrastructure just cant cope

Come to this thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a3826144-to-be-worried-about-coronavirus-part-3?msgid=94168601#94168601

Personally my view is that a pandemic was overdue and given what we know about this one whilst harsher than swine flu it certainly isnt as bad as bird flu/Mers/Sars could have been

Apart from SARS and MERS, which both spread very slowly, Coronaviruses are not endemic (always present) like influenza or rhinoviruses. Current endemic diseases already cause a lot of seasonal strain on our healthcare systems, so we don't really want to risk adding other types of virus to that list which is possible if this evolves to a pandemic which then cannot be controlled.

On top of that, there are so few examples of coronaviruses crossing the species barrier that they are novel and it's hard to predict what they will do. For example, there's uncertainty about how quickly they mutate- and if they do mutate we could be left with a much more lethal or virulent virus.