Gone Viral; Let’s Talk Pandemics
(Part I): As an Aussie living in New York City, I’m not sure what’s more embarrassing — Australians panic-buying toilet paper or ~40 percent of Americans being scared to drink Corona beer.
Things are getting particularly weird Down Under as people stockpile products and supermarkets ration the amount of certain products one can buy — a woman even pulled a knife in the toilet paper aisle in fight for the ‘bog roll’. To be clear, there is absolutely no need for Australians to be hoarding — in fact, the people who are panic-buying toilet paper are more likely to contract the Coronavirus, new “research” confirms. Consequently, the black market for cleansing supplies is rampant. Purell hand sanitizer, usually costing as low as $2.99, is currently being sold at Walmart for an inflated $198.30. Oh boy.
Meanwhile, producer of Corona, Constellation Brands, said in a statement that its customers “understand there is no link between the virus and our business.” But, in truth 16 percent of beer-drinking Americans were confused about whether Corona beer is related to the coronavirus. Plot twist: it’s not. Corona will have to find much more than a beach to survive this.
So, how did this outbreak begin? The Wuhan virus, a.k.a Novel Coronavirus, a.k.a Corona Virus, a.k.a 2019-nCoV, and now the Covid-19, is a coronavirus that started in the city of Wuhan in Hebei Province China. Yes, what a mouthful, I need a beer to wash that down. The virus originated from wild animals and mutated into a form which could infect humans, similar to that of the Severe Acute Respiratory virus (SARS) but not as deadly. It is, however, more contagious.
Reactions to the virus have been varied. Companies have updated their responses to the outbreak as Facebook has given free ads for the World Health Organization (WHO), Twitter has urged 5,000 employees to work from home, and Amazon has banned one million products from its site — most of which offer false promises of a cure for Coronavirus. Countries have implemented drastic steps — take the US which has cancelled large public gatherings, asked students to stay home from school and even closed down borders.
How scared should we really be? In times like this, it’s easy to feel trapped between wanting to take the threat seriously while also avoiding the temptation to panic. The best way to react is to prepare with real information. Here’s what we know… According to experts, despite the 95,177 people that have been diagnosed with the virus, we shouldn’t be alarmed from a health perspective (but perhaps from an economic one, given that the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped a whopping 900 points last week). Preliminary estimates suggest Coronavirus is only lethal for about two percent of those infected. In fact, one of the difficulties of containing the virus is how relatively not deadly it is, as most people don’t know they have contracted it.
So, sit back, relax/panic and crack open a (Corona) beer — as only time will tell what this really means for humankind.
Lauren Thurin, VP, Business Development
Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch predicts 40–70% of the global population will be infected with the virus. However, most of those afflicted will likely experience only mild flu-like symptoms and some may be asymptomatic entirely. Lipsitch is among a group of epidemiologists that believe the likely outcome of this outbreak will be a new seasonal disease: “cold and flu and COVID-19 season”.
Artificial intelligence platform BlueDot spotted what would become known as COVID-19, nine days prior to public announcement from the World Health Organization. Their proprietary software uses natural language processing and machine learning to scour big data in search of anomalous disease outbreaks. If Ray Dalio wasn’t already signed up, I’m sure he will be now!
Conspiracy or coincidence? Netflix released its new six-part docuseries “Pandemic”, just as the Coronavirus outbreak began making global headlines. The series is centered around creating urgency for society to better prepare against future epidemics.
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