April 17, 2020

Here’s Why COVID-19 Is Worse Than SARS

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Dr. Fauci, demonstrating his superhuman patience, appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show yesterday:


But wait. This isn’t a dumb question. Why did SARS “go away”? And if SARS went away, why can’t COVID-19 go away too? Is COVID-19 just easier to transmit? Yes indeed:

SARS and MERS have significantly higher case fatality rates than COVID-19. Yet COVID-19 is more infectious — the underlying SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads more easily among people, leading to greater case numbers.

COVID-19 is more infectious because the mechanism of transmission is different:

Once SARS jumped to humans, it was transmitted from person to person. It is most virulent during the second week of infection when virus excretions through the mucus and stool peak. With SARS, most human-to-human infections occurred in health care settings that lacked robust infection control procedures. When infection control practices were implemented, the outbreak ended. Since then, the only occurrences have occurred through laboratory accidents. They have not spread throughout the community.

COVID-19 appears to spread person-to-person, through droplets that are expelled when a person coughs or sneezes and then are inhaled by a nearby person. Less often, it may be spread by touching an infected surface and then touching one’s mouth, nose, or eyes. Transmission may also occur before a person becomes symptomatic. As the CDC cautions, “COVID-19 is a new disease and we are still learning how it spreads.”

So the big difference is that COVID-19 spreads via coughs and sneezes in the general population, and that’s inherently much harder to control than mucus and stool transmission. If anybody has more to add to this, let us know in comments.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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