3/20/2020, a month since the new guy in town started rapidly spreading and killing scores of people every day, even hundred in some places. COVID-19 or Corona Virus as they call it. It wouldn’t have really been that serious to you on new year’s, but the number of cases in hospitals of Wuhan in China were popping like pop corn in the microwave, only this time the corn could pop out of the packet. Meaning, it started spreading around the world.
What started in December as a seemingly unstartling flu maybe from a serving of bad meat or old soup, turned out to potentially the world’s worst pandemic ever. The nature of the virus and the rapid spreading is what raises huge concern throughout the world.
Self- quarantine and lockdowns in most places, accompanied by grocery crunches and probably the world’s largest demand for face-masks and hand-sanitizers wouldn’t really make us feel that very worried or alarmed about what’s happening in the world, but there’s something we need to see beyond just what’s in front of us.
One question which is very common now is, why are we under lockdowns and is it that bad? I’m afraid, the answer to the latter part of the question is YES!
The virus is so dangerous because of its nature, its strength and agility of spreading and the worst part being the incubation period of 2 weeks by which its too late. if washing your hands and not touching your face was the only protocol you had to follow, then why are Italy, Iran, China etc. under complete lockdown? Social distancing has unfortunately proved to be the need of the hour in order to fight the spreading of the virus.
Why is social distancing so important? YOU do the math.
With a mere of a couple of thousands of cases when it started in January to 140K cases as of today (03/20/2020) and the deaths rising to almost 10K, the Virus is growing exponentially!
Italy being the second worst affected country after China, considering its small population has the second highest number of cases which is 42,000 as of today (03/20/2020).
The estimate is that the number of cases doubles in 3 days, so for example, if there are 10 cases in a given town today, it could grow to thousands by the end of the month, if proper care is not taken. And that’s not the worst part yet, the shortage of ventilators is what is the scariest.
No place is equipped enough to have thousands of ventilators to facilitate the overwhelming number of growing cases. With an average of 1000 ventilators in a big city, considering the exponential rise in the number of cases would make the number of cases surpass the number of ventilators available, thus bringing a situation where the infected cant be cured.
Italy and China did the right thing of locking down their countries at the right time, which is a good response and its high time we ourselves act judiciously and practice social distancing, starting TODAY!