epidemic to pandemic?

28th February 2020:

Wow the amount and level of humour being sent around about coronavirus is keeping me highly entertained on a daily basis!  My brother in Hong Kong seems to suggest that we should take it seriously in the West. I’m still not phased by it right now, and the pictures on the news show it to mainly be contained in China but there are a few cases we are hearing outside of there. I hear the first case has arrived in my birth country of Nigeria.  I fear for the third world countries and their ability to cope with such restricted resources on so many levels of this were to become wider spread.  I really want to think that it is still a contained epidemic over there. But it definitely seems worse that flu...sadly people are already dying, and in quite high numbers each day. The news is increasingly reporting on the now named Covid-19 strain of coronavirus, and advising that people with flu like symptoms, cough, and fever, should report this to NHS 111 and consider self-isolation from family members and work etc.  Well we know that flu also kills hundreds or thousands of people every year, and this despite a vaccine, but people don’t talk about flu cases and deaths on the news every winter. If they did I think we would all freak out and never go out! If anything, is the world learning on a mass scale about how flu and other respiratory tract infections are so easily spread..? Now THAT would be a useful outcome from this scare! 



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