Worldwide, as many as five million people fall seriously ill from one particular virus every year, and hundreds of thousands die. It caused the deaths of 8,500 Canadians in 2018 and, in normal years, kills about 3,500 Canadians on average and puts more than 12,000 in hospital.
South of the border, more than 19 million across the U.S. have fallen ill with the virus in the last five months. Of these, 10,000 died — including more than 20 people in Washington state alone — and 180,000 have been hospitalized.
Despite the loss of life, nobody is donning masks. No cities are in lockdown to prevent the virus’s spread. Nobody is being quarantined for 14 days. No international evacuations are planned to rescue anyone from the deadly virus.
Instead, people are going about their regular business as if no microbial killer were lurking on the next doorknob, keyboard, telephone headset or whatever. People are still going to work coughing and sniffling. They’re still sending their kids to school with snotty noses. They’re still getting on the bus, going shopping, eating out, visiting elderly relatives in care homes and family members with young children — touching things with germy hands, moving the deadly virus from here to there, and passing it around.
After all, it’s just the influenza virus — viruses, rather, as there are several types and strains. And influenza has been around, well, forever. It sweeps through every year, as predictably as winter rainstorms and West Coast fog.
Never mind that influenza imperils seniors, children under five, pregnant women, and people with underlying health conditions such as heart disease, respiratory disease, diabetes and obesity. If falling ill with the virus itself doesn’t do them in, the pneumonia that can follow may. Influenza and pneumonia are ranked among the top 10 leading causes of death in Canada — the sixth-leading cause in 2018.
But, really — flu? Whatever.
Now, the new coronavirus spreading out from China — that would seem to be worth locking cities down and going about in masks for.
At time of writing, almost 35,000 cases have been reported around the world, most centring on one region of China. Just over 300 of the cases are outside mainland China. Four have been confirmed in B.C.
About 720 people have died from coronavirus to date. Most of the victims had other complicating health issues, but nonetheless, the tragedy has cost people their lives and parents, children, partners, siblings and friends have lost loved ones.
However, given the difference in scale and scope of illness between ho-hum influenza and novel coronavirus, there seems to be a disconnect. In wealthy, healthy countries such as Canada, public-health authorities say the virus’s risk to residents is low.
In fact, the risk from coronavirus to you and me is lower than that of this year’s flu virus — which has cost more Canadians and others their own lives and the lives of their parents, children, partners, siblings, and friends over the years.
Yet, since mid-January, coronavirus has shoved influenza into the dim corners of public inattention. The spotlight has shone brightly and unwaveringly on matters coronaviral.
The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency to authorize resource allocation to help contain the new virus, better co-ordinate international response to it — particularly in higher-risk countries — and learn more about it. New information about the virus’s biology is emerging daily, and it might be some weeks yet before we know how contagious it is.
The real danger is in the new coronavirus establishing itself among the pool of viruses that percolate and spread among humans every year in the way that — get this — flu viruses do. Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry made the point a couple of weeks ago, saying we need to do everything we can now to eradicate novel coronavirus from human populations.
If we don’t, she says: “We may end up with yet another ongoing endemic infection like influenza that we will have to deal with every year that causes severe illness and some deaths in human populations.”
At this stage, it’s unlikely we’ll ever eradicate influenza from human populations, but we do have an opportunity to keep novel, but currently low-risk, coronavirus from joining the ranks of endemic, well-known viruses that sicken and kill our friends and family members every year.
