Thus far no China or Korea type outbreaks in the United States. Physicians are not seeing large numbers of patients with pneumonia characterized by chest CT scans with the typical “ground glass” appearance of COVID-19 infiltrates. No doubt the virus is here. There were thousands of people from Dec15-Jan 23 entering multiple points in the US. Yet it appears that Caucasians and Africans are far less susceptible to infection and serious disease than Asians. Thousands of Caucasians and Africans lived and worked in Wusan yet few if any became ill and none have died. The area of Italy where the outbreak occurred happened in a region heavily populated with Chinese immigrants and Asian workers. The modern Iranian population has a large Chinese imprint in its popluations genome. The Silk Road transversed Iran and Iran was once conquered by the Mongols.
If physicians start reporting large numbers of patients with ground glass infiltrates on chest CT scans, that would be worrisome. Until then it will take its toll mostly on chronically impaired individuals and those who are genetically susceptible. Also when reliable diagnostic kits are available, many will be diagnosed but few will become seriously ill.
I’m not sure I agree with your assertion that this virus is particularly hard on Asians as opposed to other racial groups.
However, and this is anecdotal, the guy that works across the hall from me is Iranian. he was telling me yesterday that there is a significant Chinese population in Iran. Ironically he’s been sick all week. Needless to say I’m washing hands constantly.
I don’t disagree with the facts of your post at all. All of the statements are true, or at least appear to be true.
My only response is that it is very, very early in the process.
On a time line we appear to be about equal to early December in China.
There are a lot of reasons why I don’t think we will see a Wuhan or Korea-type outbreak:
—We have been warned. Everyone has heard about it now.
—We are more spread out. Even in our cities there is more “personal space” here in the US.
—We live more spread out than in China. Our homes, outside the urban areas, are more spread out.
We live in a different environment. Plus we do not smoke at the rate of others.
We need to keep an eye on the numbers. The test kits are just getting out. It will be a few weeks before we can start doing “apples to apples.”
CT is not the way to test for this. I imagine we have been seeing cases all along that we thought were influenza. Now testing all people with influenza like illness and eg flu test so is suspect numbers will be increasing
We need a couple of weeks of large scale testing before we can verify whether or not it matters whether you are Asian or not.
I am not convinced at this point, particularly since Italy has been hit so hard. While the origins in Italy were definitely Asians, it has spread to non-Asians without difficulty. Keep an eye on Italy. They are two to three weeks ahead of us.
It’s the “until then” part that’s troublesome....we are just trying to avoid ANY flu/virus....how long is this season going to last? Of course, as I said some time ago, because of all the panic over Covid...this flu season could end up being not as harmful as ones in past. I try to remember the H1N1...12000 deaths....and no one really said boo.