More than a 1000 dead. Over 45000 infected. Spread across 26 countries. The tales of coronavirus are spreading far and wide. Every day a news channel greets the morning with a fresh load of infected people. Cruises to villages, third-war countries to superpowers, babies to the elderly: no one is safe. The most effective protective measures being utilized are quarantines. But what about the long run? We can’t live in quarantines forever. Has a cure been found yet?
Doctors and researchers are trying to use drugs meant for other diseases to fight this new enemy. Unfortunately, drugs for HIV, Ebola, and Malaria can only do so much against a virus they were not made to fight. According to the CDC, there is no vaccine to prevent the coronavirus nor a definite treatment for the infected. What is to say that this virus won’t wipe out a chunk of humankind? Nearly twenty years ago, another form of coronavirus was causing a global epidemic: SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). The new virus that’s spreading present-day, 2019-nCov, topped the number of casualties of SARS and it shows no sign of slowing. Along with the lack of a reliable cure, conspiracies are being flung far and wide about how this disease spreads. Though the World Health Organization says they do not know from what animal this respiratory disease originated from, the main subjects include snakes, bats, rats, and pangolins. The past two coronaviruses came from bats, so that remains a very plausible root source. However, new evidence supports the fact that this new strain did not jump directly from bats to humans. There may have been a transitional animal: the culprit is likely the pangolin.
The one detail that everyone can agree on is the fact that it spreads from person to person. The CDC lists important prevention techniques to improve people’s chances against being prone to the virus. The main rules remain the same for any cold or virus that spreads from direct contact. Wash hands thoroughly, cough into tissues and dispose of them immediately, and stay away from people who are sick. This virus is especially tragic because it is more likely to grab hold in people who already have a weak respiratory system.
This isn’t even the worst of it though. Yes people are dying but what about those still left? The little kids left without their parents because they caught the shorter end of the stick. The elderly whose pride and joy of their lives are being snatched by a plague that doesn’t have a cure. The men and women who know their sick parents and children have the lowest survival rate from the coronavirus. What are they to do? I think this is one of the biggest problems that the coronavirus has brought about. Though the number of infected have not yet reached 50000, the number of victims of this virus has a much farther reaching audience. There have been multiple deaths that have occurred as an indirect cause of this epidemic. At the moment, there is not much we can do that can change the body count coronavirus is piling up, but the other deaths are preventable. Neglect and starvation are problems that do have a cure. We should spend time focusing on them as well as the infected patients.
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