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COVID-19 Is Far Worse Than Other Varieties of Coronaviruses
Do not let the low mortality rate fool you
The good thing is that we know a bit more about this virus than when we had started. And mind you, it has been half a year! But we have not learned enough so that we can stretch our legs. We know that this virus is different from the other varieties of Coronaviruses. But how?
Everything has to do with the underlying epidemiology of the pathogen.
For starters, epidemiology is the study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states and events in specified populations.
In layman terms, it means the study of how this virus reacts in a specified population. We know that it is fast spreading and has low mortality rate. SARS, which is caused by another variety of coronavirus, infected only 8422 people and killed just about 916 before it was declared as “contained”. Covid-19 has already infected more than 18 million and killed more than 7 lakh people.
If you calculate the mortality rate, SARS’s rate was around 11%. It was very deadly, whereas the fatality rate for Covid-19 is just 0.5- 1.2%.
The fatality rate for Covid-19 is just…
