Well… it’s official. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar declared a public health emergency about the new coronavirus today. I saw plenty of other bloggers post about it last week, so that should have been a sign this was coming. I was hoping it would not escalate further, but here we are anyway.
U.S. government officials are going to start quarantining any flight passenger for 14 days who has been in the Hubei province in China in the past 14 days. Major airports will also be screening anyone who has been in mainland China for evidence of symptoms of the virus. The Trump administration has also announced a ban on foreign national travel for those who have been within China in the last 14 days. The reason for this constant 14 day number is that the coronavirus can take possibly between 2 to 14 days to actually show symptoms after a person catches the disease.
The last time the Center for Disease Control had issued something like this was in the 1960s to evaluate smallpox. It is worrying that the virus spread has reached a level like this, since our society has not been tested against a threat like this in a long time. We definitely have many countermeasures in place, but we can never really be sure if it is enough. The virus is definitely very contagious, but does not seem to be too deadly. It still will, however, take scientists at least a year to develop a vaccine, making this a scary situation. Hopefully, though, these measures can prevent the coronavirus from entering the United States.
On the other hand, I wonder what is being done to prevent the virus from spreading into third world countries that have high population density and bad sanitary conditions. The virus will definitely have an easier time spreading through areas like that.
At the time of writing, there are 9,856 confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus, and 213 deaths. The virus has infected 26 different countries, though it should be noted that all 213 deaths occurred in mainland China. There have been 7 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the U.S., with the latest one being quite close to my home in Santa Clara County, California. The man had traveled to China and luckily quarantined himself. Knowing my luck with everything going on in my life, I will be the one infected next. You can get updates here: https://www.cnn.com/asia/live-news/coronavirus-outbreak-01-31-20-intl-hnk/index.html
With every new piece of news I read, it feels like the world is just getting closer to ending. It is always this natural disaster or that economic crisis. People need to stop destroying our planet, because clearly our planet is not having it. If everyone knew how hard it was to live like me with my skin disorder, maybe they would be a little more grateful from time to time.
Yellow Guy 