Coronavirus outbreak will likely get worse before it gets better, specialist says

let's welcome dr. Shiro madad senior director of the special pathogens program for the entire new york city health and hospital system dr. Madad is also a senior investigator at the Center for Global Health Care. Special Pathogen Preparedness was recently featured in the Netflix docuseries Doctor Madad, thank you so much for joining us, thank you when we see this huge increase in reporting numbers in the middle of last week. China and since then it's gone down a little bit, does that make you think we're past the worst of this or can't we say that yet? I think not at all.

I think it's too early to tell and with this trend I think we need to take it with a grain of salt, we are still in a very early stage of the

outbreak

and I think there are still a lot of things we don't know yet, there is still community transmission not only in China but also in other countries around the world. world, so I think we're very close to a tipping point where this could be declared a pandemic event, so I certainly think, in my opinion, it's probably going to get

worse

before it

gets

better

, including places like the US, that's right, I think we're going to continue to see additional cases of maybe even community transmission according to what the CDC is saying and that's why across the country and hospitals and healthcare systems or basically you know prepare for the worst of the cases in terms of the cruise ship and how people were treated that way, do you support American citizens being brought home or do you think they should have been kept on the cruise ship at a level?

It felt almost like an abuse of human rights to keep all those people together like that. So cruise ships are famous because they obviously incubate a number of different infectious diseases and we've seen that with norovirus, but I think the decision that was made is obviously based more on politics, maybe less on science, and I think that as this continues. to evolve we

will

see if this was a right decision or not personally right now it seems like maybe it wasn't a great decision but I think it's good even if they kept themselves quarantined at an Air Force Base or wherever it was when they returned home , so I think social distancing is a very important aspect, it's a good public health measure, certainly in that sense, I think it's a good way to mitigate obviously the problems that we're seeing, can you talk about the history?

If so, what would that be like? How long does it take to evolve and what would you look for? and God forbid the worst case scenario, so the best case scenario, you know, in this current epidemic, obviously, is that the virus you know basically calms down if you want it and we can control it not only within China but Worldwide. It doesn't look like that's going to be the case. This is a respiratory virus. Respiratory viruses are very difficult to contain just because of the nature of the virus itself, I think. In the worst case, it

will

continue to infect susceptible people until we have a therapeutic doctor or a vaccine available.

How virulent do you think the virus really is? The death rates are very high, but they may not include all the people we don't even know had it because they didn't get as sick, that's right, what's your feeling about it? It's much less than 1%, wouldn't you think that's right? So a large portion of the cases ended. 80% are mild cases and I think for every individual who actually goes to the hospital, there are probably hundreds more who obviously have the corona virus disease, but they don't go to the hospital, so without counting them in the case, the mortality is higher .

The average flu rate is higher, but it's lower than SARS and MERS, which is another corona virus, so I think in that context this is a mild virus, but again it's too early to say just once again . How do we get there? How did SARS arise? corona virus, how did Peter find out, why do you say it is un

likely

to happen this time, was that person to person transmission is more difficult, this is

better

, code 19 is better, so it seems that the crona 19 virus is obviously acting a lot like the seasonal flu and is much more transmissible, so we're obviously seeing a lot more people getting infected compared to the SARS

outbreak

we saw in 2002, but I think it's also important highlight the number of people who have actually recovered from the corona virus disease, that is, more than 13,000 people.

They have recovered, they find it immediately and they go through a period of six months with heart and breathing problems. I think it's still too early to say that we're only six weeks away, so I think they're following these people to see what is that, Paul, maybe even after, but no, we don't have three more corona viruses that are repeat like the flu every year, it's always great, a common cold, that's right, so I didn't realize the

coronavirus

sounded given what's happening in China it's terrible, but there are three that repeat, others that they repeat every year, that's right, yes, I mean

coronavirus

es, it's a family of RNA viruses and they can cause, you know, mild viral infections, you know, viral ones like the common cold and then more serious infections like killer infections. .

SARS and now coronavirus disease very quickly, how close we are to a vaccine and when you're a fan of it, that stops you in your tracks in terms of whether we should still fear it or not, so I think we're still at least one away. year for a really effective vaccine, so I certainly think good, good public health measures will obviously continue to take center stage, but I think even then, when a vaccine is available, we've seen this during measles. The outbreak got the anti-vaxxers right, so we may have a vaccine available, but now we're going to have to face another question: do people want the vaccine and will they really be willing to get vaccinated?