The coronavirus has continued to spread and kill people, since my last blog post the death toll has risen from 3000 deaths to over 900 deaths. The virus has continued to reach new countries and has reached new areas of the US. Last week the coronavirus reached the East Coast of the US for the first time when a Boston man contracted the virus. This caused a bit of discomfort for some of my friends and family. Knowing that the virus is creeping closer and closer to us here in North Carolina is definitely unsettling.
As we discussed in class, the coronavirus has a longer incubation period, which allows the virus to be transmitted through people who have no symptoms. Studies in Germany seemed to have confirmed this idea. This is particularly dangerous because it allows the virus to spread very quickly without detection. This incubation period makes the virus nearly impossible to track because people will not know when they contracted it, who they got it from or who they gave it to. When I get a cold I normally know where I got it from because that person will have had symptoms of it and my symptoms would show up shortly after.
The big problem with coronavirus is that we are currently unprepared to fight it, there are no vaccines or anti-viral treatments for it. Experts say it could take years to develop an effective vaccine for the coronavirus. As we discussed in class, scientists are working on an anti-viral treatment for the coronavirus using HIV drugs. China has started to test coronavirus patients with anti-HIV drugs, although there is no evidence that it can help yet. I think that when they do eventually develop a vaccine for the coronavirus it will rather popular, since many people are very afraid of contracting the virus. However, there will still be anti-vaccine advocates who refuse to get it.
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