There are lot of opinions out there about SARS-CoV2 (aka. Corona). Lots of them stating that COVID-19 (the disease of a SARS-CoV2 infection) is not more than just the good ol’ flu. But this opinion is BS! Although I’m more a technical guy interested in computer stuff and security I feel the urge to say some words about this topic to provide an opposite pole. Because this ill-informed opinion SARS-CoV2 is just like the flu threatens the security of the health of my family, friends and me!
There are lots of scientific statements out there and as far as I understand they boil down to three main reasons why SARS-CoV2 is not just the flu:
First: There Is No Vaccine
This is in my opinion the most important one. We have just no vaccine against SARS-CoV2. For the flu we have vaccine. Yes, we need to make a new one each year, but this is not a from scratch vaccine like for SARS-CoV2. The flu is something special: We have each year a slightly different new kind of flu. But we know how to make a vaccine for this new kind. It is just like we know how to build a car, but we do not know what color we need. When we know the needed color we just paint the car. For SARS-CoV2 it is more like we do not know how to build a car and must invent it first.
Second: There Is No Drug for Medical Treatment
We have just no drugs to help infected people to cure from COVID-19. For flu we have various drugs for medical treatment. For COVID-19 the only thing we can do at the moment is to monitor the ill person and put them on a ventilator, if they become worse. But they must recover by them self.
Third: It Is Exponential Yo Dawg
The infection rate of COVID-19 given free rein is somewhere roundabout three. Which means that one person infects three others. It’s dead simple to see that this is en exponential growth. One problem here is that we have no initial immunity like we have for the flu. So it is more likely that an SARS-CoV2 infected person become sick than it is likely by the flu. The other problem is that most of us do not really understand what exponential growth means.