The Coronavirus

The news at this moment in time is dominated by the coronavirus. How worried should we be? Should we trust virologists who generally regard this virus as very worrying and who suggest we need to take appropriate, and perhaps even radical measures, to combat it? Or should we trust many of those on the net and TV who say this coronavirus is only a little more worrying than flu?

Well, regarding the latter claim, how on earth are these people reaching their conclusions since the number of people dying from this virus is roughly 10 to 20 fold more than those who get flu, and is considerably more contagious to boot? We are experiencing a roughly doubling of infected people every 6 days. Hence, we can also expect the number of people who will die from this virus to also double roughly every 6 days or so. If no action is taken we can surely expect this exponential growth of the infected to continue. This conceivably could result in millions of deaths within the next 3 to 4 months. So, what are their arguments in the face of these facts? All they ever seem to say is to point out that scarcely anyone has of yet died from this virus. But that's because it hasn't had time to affect more than a very small proportion of the world population.

I think part of the problem here is that the general populace does not have a good grasp of the implications of exponential growth such as exhibited by this virus. Consider a sheet of paper. Now imagine if we kept folding it in half so that it's thickness doubles each time. Obviously, we can only do it around 6-7 times or so before it becomes too thick and stiff to fold any further. But, imagine if we could keep folding it 50 times with each fold doubling the thickness/pile of paper. After folding it 50 times how high will the pile of paper be? A few inches? A few feet even perhaps? No, it would be vastly higher than that. In fact, the pile of paper would be taller than any building on earth, taller than Everest, it would even extend past the orbit of the moon. In fact, it would extend to somewhere in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

I submit that the claim this virus is no more worrying than flu is a preposterous position. In contrast, virologists have provided what I consider to be compelling arguments that we shouldn't be complacent. If we wish to avoid the death of millions, it seems to me that other countries need to follow the examples set by China and Italy and implement the appropriate radical measures.  Of course, this will immensely disrupt our lives, and economies will be hit hard, but the consequences of not taking such measures might be even more calamitous.