24 February 2020 — 1428 mst
When will Wuhan Fever (aka Covid-19) hit the Flathead?
How well will public health authorities be prepared for it?
▶ U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
▶ World Health Organization.
▶ Kalispell Regional Healthcare.
▶ The Flathead County Health Department directs you to the CDC.
Wuhan Fever, a highly contagious virus far more deadly than seasonal influenza, is breaking out of China, its country of origin. Writing in today’s New York Times, infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm observes:
It’s now clear that the epidemic was never going to be contained. At most, its spread was slowed by the lockdown imposed in China and other countries’ efforts to identify infected people and anyone they might have been in contact with.
Covid-19 seems to spread like influenza, through the air, person to person. Unlike Ebola, SARS and MERS, individuals can transmit this coronavirus before the onset of symptoms or even if they don’t become ill. An infected person appears to spread the disease to an average of 2.6 people. After 10 generations of transmission, with each taking about five or six days, that one initial case has spawned more than 3,500, most with no or mild symptoms, yet probably infectious. The fact that mild cases are difficult to differentiate from colds or the flu only complicates the diagnosis.
Absent a miracle, Wuhan Fever will make its way to the Flathead, a destination for international tourism. When? That’s uncertain. But sooner than later, I suspect, and long before an effective vaccine is available.
Will local public health authorities and the local medical system be prepared for an outbreak of Wuhan Fever? They’ll say so, and may believe they are.
I hope they are, but I have my doubts. A few cases of Wuhan Fever should not be a problem. But if the disease becomes epidemic, as it well could, I think the health care system will become stressed, then overwhelmed as hospitals run out of beds, medications, and healthy doctors and nurses.
It’s a troubling thought. When the Asian Flu swept across the U.S. in 1957–1958, I ended up hospitalized for a week, my temperature spiking to 106°F. My parents feared I might not survive. A decade later, I survived the Hong Kong Flu without being hospitalized. Since then, although I always get flu and pneumonia shots, I’ve survived two more frightening bouts with influenza and its complications.
Given my history with influenza, my age, and chronic conditions that sap my strength, I’m acutely aware that I might not survive a bout of Wuhan Fever. I’m already taking the usual precautions to minimize the risk of being exposed to seasonal influenza, and will continue to avoid crowds, strangers, and friends who travel. Otherwise, all I can do is worry and hope that having an anti-vaxxer on the Flathead County Board of Health will not impair the swift and proper treatment a local outbreak of Wuhan Fever.
Covid-19 is a politically correct weasel name
The World Health Organization, undoubtedly brown-nosing China’s authorities, has decreed that Wuhan Fever shall be known as Covid-19, shorthand for Coronavirus 2019, an anodyne term designed to obscure the origins of the virus and thus deny China the credit it deserves for being the source of the disease. Reports the New York Times:
Coronaviruses attack a variety of birds and mammals. The new virus seems to have leapt from wildlife to humans in a seafood and meat market in Wuhan, China, where live animals were slaughtered and sold as food.
That’s a familiar story. The SARS epidemic, also caused by a coronavirus, began in China with the consumption of a catlike animal called the palm civet. The MERS epidemic began with a coronavirus transmitted to humans from camels in the Middle East.
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Experts still do not know which species transmitted the new coronavirus, technically called SARS-CoV-2, to people. But pangolins, also known as scaly anteaters, are now the leading suspects.
The world’s most trafficked mammal, pangolins are barred from international trade and are protected domestically in China. But pangolin meat and blood are considered delicacies on the black market, and sales of their scales for use in traditional Chinese medicine remain legal for certain hospitals and pharmacies.
China is big, powerful, exotic, fascinating, and dangerous. Thanks to its dirty culinary and dietary habits, it’s newest and least wanted export is a deadly disease that will murder people all over the world. And Donald Trump cannot stop it with a deal or a tariff.