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How dangerous is a coronavirus infection?

Gene Leonard MDCorona 30 Morbitity Mers  18 Mar 20

Do not listen to conspiracy theories or factoids. It is serious. 86 percent of the people, who already heve the virus in the USA, do not know they have it. It can kill babies and toddlers as well. If you value your loved ones hunker down, and help slow down the deadly virus’s transmission.

How dangerous is a coronavirus infection?

Usually coronavirus illnesses are fairly mild, affecting just the upper airway. But the new virus, as well as both SARS and MERS, are different.

Those three types of betacoronaviruses can latch onto proteins studding the outside of lung cells, and penetrate much deeper into the airway than cold-causing coronaviruses, says Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, M.D. The 2019 version is “a disease that causes more lung disease than sniffles,” Fauci says.

Damage to the lungs can make the viruses deadly. In 2003 and 2004, SARS killed nearly 10 percent of the 8,096 people in 29 countries who fell ill. A total of 774 people died, according to the World Health Organization.

MERS is even more deadly, claiming about 30 percent of people it infects. Unlike SARS, outbreaks of that virus are still simmering, Fauci says. Since 2012, MERS has caused 2,494 confirmed cases in 27 countries and killed 858 people.

MERS can spread from person to person, and some “superspreaders” have passed the virus on to many others. Most famously, 186 people contracted MERS after one businessman unwittingly brought the virus to South Korea in 2015 and spread it to others. Another superspreader who caught MERS from that man passed the virus to 82 people over just two days while being treated in a hospital

March 18, 2020 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, health