[AccordingToHoyt] When word came of a new deadly virus from China, our grown children asked what we thought. We said, "Wash your hands, and don’t pick your nose". They claimed that was our answer to everything medical, along with "take ibuprofen and walk it off". Why were we so convinced the world wasn’t ending?New viruses come along fairly frequently. Most of them never get noticed. Some of them cause human diseases. Most of them cause something indistinguishable from a cold. Occasionally, there is one that causes more severe problems. Then comes a familiar pattern. The worst cases hit the medical system first making all cases of the illness appear severe and with a high mortality rate. Patients show up really sick and dying and we don’t know what’s wrong. They don’t fit any of our familiar disease patterns. We start thinking a bad pandemic is going to hit, and everyone will die. Then we start recognizing the not-so-sick patients with the disease. As people hear about it, they come to the doctors earlier. We then realize that there is a whole host of people that have it, but aren’t sick enough to come see the doctors. Then, it’s just one of many viruses to worry about. We’ve seen this pattern before...
Remember West Nile Virus? Initially very sick people presented to the medical systems. What if a large number of people caught this new threat and became this sick? Before we knew it people were very upset, we got calls from people saying they had found a dead bird and could we test it for West Nile Virus. One mother called saying she had seen a dead crow and the kids were near it what should she do. As it turned out West Nile Virus was widely disseminated with many asymptomatic cases and most symptomatic patients had a mild cold and a headache. In the end the probability of serious or fatal disease from West Nile Virus turned out to be low and today it has not changed how we live our lives.